Bio

Chin’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including at the Textile Museum in Washington, DC, the Metropolitan Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan, the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, and the Uijeongbu Arts Center in Seoul, South Korea. In 2019. She was invited to participate in the 2024 exhibition Korean Embroidery in Modern Times at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Duksoo Palace, Seoul.

For 20 years, Chin has been an educator in Kansas, teaching drawing, painting, color theory, and mixed media. She was recognized as Distinguished Faculty in 2008 and received an Excellence in Teaching Award in 2020.

Born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, Shin-hee Chin earned her BFA and MFA at HongIk University in Korea. Afterward, she immigrated to the United States and received an MA in Fiber Arts at Cal State Long Beach.

Her work has appeared in publications including Art Quilting Studio (Winter 2023, Spring 2025), Museum Quality: Exploring Art Quilts with SAQA (2023), and on the covers of the SAQA Journal (Spring 2017) and Surface Design Journal (Summer 2014).

Chin was a keynote speaker at the 2020 SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) conference and spoke again at the 2025 SAQA conference in Florida. She was selected as a research fellow by the Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity, participating in a seminar on Contemporary Chinese Art and Society held in Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing in 2018.

Influenced by feminist traditions, Christian spirituality, and Eastern philosophy, Chin’s work explores complex themes related to the female body, motherhood, mother tongue, cultural identity, hybridity, and a sense of belonging.

Artist Resume

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Statement

Cultural context has most shaped my work as I have spent half my life in South Korea and the past two decades in the United States. I have had equal exposure to two vastly different cultures. In my years dealing with issues of a bi-cultural lifestyle, art has helped me reconcile the conflicting nature of these influences. My work reflects this binary approach – female vs. male, East vs. West, art vs. craft – all those paradoxes inhabit the same space just as both Korea and America co-exist in me. From these cultures, I draw inspiration specifically from the feminist tradition, Christian spirituality, and Eastern philosophy. 

In my work, I attempt to carve out what I proudly call a feminine territory in which the voices of effaced and silenced women reverberate, and to translate the experiences of women in a way that people of different ethnic backgrounds and cultural experiences can understand. For that purpose, I utilize needle, thread, and fabric to call into question the deep-seated bias that women’s work is menial, marginal and undesirable. I convert the conventional “feminine” activity of needlework into a useful medium for the making of art. Each collage from fabric that was cut, ironed, pasted, and stitched. In addition to fabric and needlework, I use sumi ink, acrylic/oil paints, various papers, and calligraphic techniques. 

The slow nature of my technique mimics the creative process of birthing. This recalls the gradual forming of the fetus through the intersection of capillary within the belly of the mother or the silkworm’s patient and continuous spinning leading to the creation of its cocoon. The techniques have an important meaning for me both as a compositional device and as an obsessive activity. In experimenting with a variety of “domestic” media such as clothes, threads, and paper, my hands participate in the process of the intricate linking of the irregular pattern of threads that form vein, skin, and scar. Thus, these pieces speak not so much of sorrow, anger, regrets, but rather, of healing, recovering, inner joy attained by/through converting the physical, oppressive condition into the stimulating and dynamic inner resources for creative life. Through the strategic use of media that have been traditionally associated with the feminine, I want to show that seemingly ‘trivial female work’ can be a source of pleasure and power for women.

While feminism has influenced my choice in media and technique, my Christianity has shaped concepts and themes in my work.  Art and spirituality serve similar functions in my life. Art uses visual elements to explore and communicate truth; spirituality is just another mode of my exploration and communication of truth. They both help me understand life and this world. 

Eastern philosophy, on the other hand, has shaped my art-making in terms of process and approach. My role in relationship to my work is more as a “collaborator” than as a creator. This conception echoes the Eastern understanding of art and artists. Eastern philosophy, in contrast to Western philosophy, conceived the self-effacement and non-mindedness of an artist as the primary step to be taken before Nature could truly be free at work. By working with the nature of the material, the work maintains integrity. Art then becomes the product of a dialogue with Nature, rather than the process of subduing it.