Formerly the Ontario Crafts Council, Craft Ontario is a not-for-profit service organization that works to have craft recognized as a valuable part of life. We promote and celebrate professional craft through providing member opportunities, and advocate for craft practice by educating and empowering diverse audiences.
Joon Hee Kim's work narrates life and death. Objects are made from funeral urns, reliquaries, and church items. Each piece is a contemporary object of record and communication conveying new narrative of personal moments. The sculpture figures represent aspects of real life of an era fantastically, far-reaching the imagination of the viewer into transcendence. The engaging forms and shapes illustrate hidden memories, as connections emerge between past and present. Reflecting on the persevering burden of human relationships, behaviours, and emotions, the collective anecdote representing standard and mysterious aspects of life. The work consist of a casket and urns for ashes of an individual, to commemorate glorious moment that shined brightly once in the lifetime. It is more influenced by places such as cemeteries, architecture, and monumental statues. Most directly by High gate Cemetery and its various monuments of the buried celebrities and public figures. The cemetery also features numerous motifs of classical styles and decoration stretched beyond the traditional function and imagination of the viewer. Objects are looked at to see how they are used to tell the story of life. A lot of chronologies are contained within mute object, and political and social issues are arranged and expressed as an outcome of process in the present time.
The aim is to cast variety of selective and personal found objects, casted objects to reassemble and observe for reshaping and renewing familiar form, similar to a sketchbook capturing special moment and cherished personal memory. This multilayered process forms remembrance and adds unusual holographic characteristic making way for contemporary role of sculpture as innovative challenges fill my daily life. Object becomes relevant tool to measure human existence and absence by rediscovering, reassessing, and expanding from its original meaning while the object is transformed into more identical to create new visual language. Sculptures that she makes celebrate each and every moment of life rather than the short glory at the end. Through visual language that speaks of tears, emotions, and this form of work reflects the rebuilding of the ruins of life. The hope is to complete the race with a flourishing end.
You Must Carry My Bones Up From This Place
Glazed Porcelain, Gold Luster, Mother of pearl, 2016
70cm x 27cm x 50cm
Will Rest in Your Promises
Glazed Porcelain, Gold Luster, Mother of pearl, 2016
29cm x 31cm x 51cm
Lack Nothing
Glazed Ceramic, Gold Luster, 2016
33cm x 33cm x 53cm
Lack Nothing(detail shot)
Glazed Ceramic, Gold Luster, 2016
33cm x 33cm x 53cm
When You Walk Into The Room
Cast in Bronze, 2016
32cm x 29cm x 62cm
Fill Me With Fullness
Cast in Bronze, 2016
39cm x 21cm x 52cm
We Will Not Be Shaken
Cast in Bronze, 2016
32cm x 22cm x 69cm
Where Blue Is Found Is Where You Are
Glazed Ceramic, Gold Luster, 2016
Various Size
Oh, I’m Not Losing Hope
Glazed Ceramic, 2016
33cm x 31cm x 48cm
Immortal Glory_Various funeral urns
Glazed Ceramic, Gold Luster, 2016
20cm x 16cm x 42cm, 33cm x 33cm x 53cm, 44cm x 44cm x 50cm
Formerly the Ontario Crafts Council, Craft Ontario is a not-for-profit service organization that works to have craft recognized as a valuable part of life. We promote and celebrate professional craft through providing member opportunities, and advocate for craft practice by educating and empowering diverse audiences.