ALONG RECONCILIATION WAY // SHIN-HEE CHIN AND 10 YEARS OF 108|CONTEMPORARY

by Cassidy Petrazzi

A process of reconciliation is central to the work and practice of Shin-hee Chin. A fiber and mixed-media artist born in Korea who has lived in the United States for over two decades, her work straddles and interrogates opposed dualities: east and west, art and craft, female and male. Chin’s art practice has helped her work through these binaries productively to ultimately reconcile her with her world. This fall, Shin-hee Chin presents Entangled Harmony, a solo exhibition, at 108|Contemporary in Tulsa from October 6 to November 19.

Chin works to generate, she says, a “proudly feminine territory” that gives voice to female experiences that can be felt by a wide audience. The threads and fiber of most of her collaged works address the historical undervaluing of women’s labor. The technique Chin employs, a layered and laborious process of hand stitching, connects her creative process to the corporeal experience of birthing that recalls “the gradual forming of the fetus through the intersection of capillaries within the belly of the mother, or the silkworm’s patient and continuous spinning leading to the creation of its cocoon.” For Chin, this process of obsessive weaving, linking, layering, and patterning is an exploration and recovery of an ecstatic maternal condition which dynamically creates life.

Some of Chin’s earlier works are explicit in their preoccupation with feminine experience. Woman’s Life, 2016, consists of a mixed-media collage box containing nine embroidery hoops that depict different stages of a woman’s life such as childhood, adolescence, and middle age. More recent works focus on Chin’s place in the Midwest, specifically the plains of Kansas where she currently lives and teaches at Tabor College in Hillsboro. These fiber works present intricate portraits of natural settings, showing trees in winter, sprawling prairie, and expansive grasslands in a rainbow of layered, woven color.

Though void of human figures, they don’t feel remote or uninhabitable. Rather the points of view generated in these works put viewers at the center of nature. Pieces like The Trees in Late Autumn, 2020, can make you feel like you are stepping into the scene, enveloped by darkness with brassy grass crunching underfoot as you move toward a cluster of skeletal, bare-limbed trees.

Chin reconciles her place within many different worlds. The body is always central to her work, whether depicted or not, as Chin’s technique recalls our cellular makeup, or the web of the universe, both a tangled weave of interconnected lines and mass. The woven planes and structures she creates implicate the body in their forms and resulting images. Looking for her place in the world, she engages the audience in discovering its own place within nature through a universal and visceral lens. A new work on view at 108|Contemporary, Entangled Harmony, represents the “symbiotic relationship between nature and humankind,” Chin says, “symbolizing intimate dialogues and embracing the mysterious, restorative force of nature.”

Embracing the Void, a woven sculptural work also visible at 108, comprises 23 panels hung from the ceiling in front of the windows that front Reconciliation Way, the street outside the gallery. Originally hung from the limbs of trees, this current installation of the work will allow viewers to weave themselves through the panels and experience how light and air move through the crevices between threads.

Shin-hee Chin’s exhibition represents the culmination of 108|Contemporary’s 10th Anniversary year. The gallery, founded as the Brady Craft Alliance in 2009, was renamed 108|Contemporary in 2013 when it moved into the newly restored and renovated Mathews Warehouse. Already dedicated to bringing craft artists to Tulsa with exhibitions like VisionMakers, 108|Contemporary’s signature juried biennial exhibition of contemporary fine craft-based regional artists, the gallery’s move to its current location cemented its relevance to both the Tulsa Arts District and the wider Oklahoma art scene. 108 made its official debut in the Mathews Warehouse in March of 2013 with the Tapestries of Jon Eric Riis, which showcased ornate jackets and tapestries as an expansive example of the state of American craft.

The idea of reconciliation is central to 108|Contemporary and the Tulsa Arts District as well. The street on which the gallery sits, originally named Brady Street after Wyatt Tate Brady, a Tulsa city founder and member of the Ku Klux Klan, was rededicated 10 years ago to honor Mathew Brady, a Civil War photographer with, controversially, no connection to Tulsa. The street was renamed again in 2018 to become Reconciliation Way, in reference to the 1921 Tulsa Massacre. Though further reconciliation and meaningful reparations are needed for the victims of the 1921 massacre and the city as a whole, 108|Contemporary thoughtfully partakes in some of the work required.

Exhibitions mounted at 108|Contemporary over the last 10 years have ranged from 2013’s show Ceramic Landscape: Bean Finneran, the gallery’s first presentation of ceramic work. The exhibition, which included an interactive component, left a lasting imprint on 108 and its commitment to hands-on audience engagement. Later shows, like the 2016 exhibition Savages & Princesses: The Persistence of Native American Stereotypes curated by America Meredith, showcased 16 Native American artists and prompted questions of race, representation, and sovereignty. Continuing the gallery’s dedication to creating space for challenging conversations, 108’s 2017 exhibition Both Sides Now: Joyes Scott & Sonya Clark centered on race, identity, and injustice and was complemented with robust programming that supported open dialogue. More recent exhibitions include SHENEQUA: Wove, which brought the Afro-Caribbean artist to Tulsa in 2022 and showcased her synthetic hair-woven tapestries that center on intimacy, class, and memory.

A recent conversation with Jen Boyd Martin, 108|Contemporary’s Executive Director, and Board President Jean Ann Fausser affirmed the gallery’s commitment to progressive practice. Building from their success with social-centered programs, such as Any Given

Child and their Crafting for All Workshops, Martin added that “all of our events and lectures will now have sign language interpretation, along with events specifically targeted toward those groups.” The last 10 years have strengthened 108|Contemporary’s vision of contemporary craft and purpose as a space for community inclusion, dialogue, and education.

Shin-hee Chin’s Entangled Harmony can be experienced at 108|Contemporary in Tulsa from October 6 through November 19. You can learn more about this exhibition as well as events surrounding 108|Contemporary’s 10-year anniversary at 108contemporary.org.

CASSIDY PETRAZZI is an art historian and writer. Her research interests focus on Fluxus, the bodily experience of time-based works, and histories of cooking. A New Yorker by birth, Petrazzi lives in Tulsa with her husband, twin boys, and dachshund. She received her MA in Art History from OSU and her BFA in Expanded Media from Alfred University. Petrazzi works in Tulsa at The Synagogue where she is director of operations.