For many years I hosted a food program, Earth Eats, (you might have heard of it?)
One of the themes that showed up again and again was connection—the way food allows us to connect with one another. Whether it’s shared memories over a favorite childhood dish, or discovery across cultural differences—food has that connective power.
I think that’s what art does, too. Maybe that’s its purpose. Artists create because they have something to say--a thought they want to share, an interpretation of world events, a feeling or a personal experience they want others to know about and understand.
Not every work of art achieves that desired communication, at least not for everyone receiving the art.
Sookyung Augustin’s thesis show at the Grunwald Gallery drew that line of connection for me. It’s called (In)Visible Identity: all the little things. It was included in the second round of MFA Thesis exhibits from the Eskenazi School of Art Architecture and Design at Indiana University.
Arranged like some kind of medical specimens in tall glass jars (from another era) placed on top of standard white gallery plinths, Augustin’s finely crafted personal adornment objects captured my attention instantly. Visually, the delicately detailed objects suspended in their glass cylinders appealed to me in a tactile way--pleasantly frustrating my desire to handle them.
The organic, needle-felted wool elements contrasted with pierced copper and intricate enamel designs. The artist balances the hard and the sharp against the soft almost plush, and all of it in reds and pinks, yellow/gold—colors that feel feminine and pretty and simultaneously fleshy and grotesque. Sookyung Augustin’s work walks that fine line so deftly. I was pulled in by the beauty, the evident skill and the exquisite (at times obsessive) craft of her work.
Accompanying the title and material placards for each piece was what the artist refers to as “symptom cards.” Here’s an example:
Symptom: abdominal pain
Three uterine/cervical samples in four years: one with pain medication. Subject informed they could return to work the same day, despite using a glorified hole punch to collect cervical tissue.
There’s just enough text there, just enough story, just enough context to guide me in my looking. When I examine the piece--an intricate locket made of copper, wool and tiny glass seed beads--I notice the shapes that conjure the action of a hole punch. The response is visceral.
Sookyung Augustin has accomplished the work of an artist.
Since I have known several people who suffer from chronic ailments—sometimes without clear diagnoses and certainly without effective treatment, I was moved by Augustin’s project. The concept was legible and meaningful to me.
As a woman navigating the medical system my whole life, I’m familiar with physicians dismissing or downplaying symptoms, and doubting my lived experience.
The show makes visible Augustin’s lifelong struggle with illness, pain, discomfort, inconclusive testing and the not unrelated early trauma of being adopted from Korea and raised in a white, American household.
I’m drawn to work that digs into artists’ personal biographies. I know how transformative it can be to grapple with issues like illness and trauma through art making.
Rarely does an artist manage to pull this off as well as Sookyung Augustin does in her MFA Thesis show. Her work is not literal, it is not didactic, nor is it vague. It is understood in a way that language alone could not accomplish, The communication is legible and clear, in part because it is felt, emotionally and somatically.
I’m honored and grateful to have witnessed her project.
