A Room of My Own addressed the issues of woman and creativity by focusing on how cultural structures and strictures, repressive of women, could become dynamic and inspiring resources for female creativity.
The title of my project, “A room of My Own,” was inspired by Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One‘s Own “, in which Woolf stresses the significance of a room—a physical, private space—for a female artist to pursue her creativity. In my project, the idea of “a room” was akin to Woolf’s in the sense that it represented the space of creation that preconditioned female creativity. My project also used the motif of “a room” as a space imprisoning and repressing female creativity—a confining space in which Korean women were traditionally forced to stay to perform a variety of tasks, such as knitting, embroidery and waving. Furthermore, the room is symbolic of female body and the womb, which both envelopes and generates life.
Hence, “A Room of My Own” was the site in which tow completely opposite meaning of room coexisted and completed. The individual works placed in “a room,” such as “self-portrait,” “Effacement,” “confinement,” “Human Value”, and “Poom,” configured various features and movements of the female body in the creative(procreative) act.
In terms of technique and material, I appropriated the valued craft techniques such as stitching and random wrapping. I utilized a variety of remnants of fabrics of clothing and threads.
Evert piece captured a form of women’s silencing and oppression. I attempted to speak not so much anger, regrets, sorrow, or resentment about the stricture of womanhood, but rather of healing, recovering, and the inner joy attained through converting oppressive conditions into stimulating and dynamic resources for female creativity.
