Meekyoung Shin, who trained in the classical tradition of European sculpture, is known for her ongoing “Translation” project, which explores the processes of translation and mutation—both literal and figurative—undergone by cultural objects that have been subjected to a change in location. Her “Translation Vases” (2009), for example, are soap facsimiles of Chinese originals created for the European market in the 16th through 20th centuries, painstakingly colored, carved, and painted and displayed on shipping crates. For Shin’s “Kouros” series (2009), she modeled archaic and classical sculptures in soap, preserving their cracks, missing limbs, and other defects.
Meekyoung Shin, who trained in the classical tradition of European sculpture, is known for her ongoing “Translation” project, which explores the processes of translation and mutation—both literal and figurative—undergone by cultural objects that have been subjected to a change in location. Her “Translation Vases” (2009), for example, are soap facsimiles of Chinese originals created for the European market in the 16th through 20th centuries, painstakingly colored, carved, and painted and displayed on shipping crates. For Shin’s “Kouros” series (2009), she modeled archaic and classical sculptures in soap, preserving their cracks, missing limbs, and other defects.