Yong Soon Min

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Yong Soon Min
민영순
Born(1953-04-29)April 29, 1953
Bugok, South Korea
DiedMarch 12, 2024(2024-03-12) (aged 70)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley (BA, MA, MFA)
Known forinstallation art, photography, printmaking, mixed media

Yong Soon Min (Korean: 민영순; RR: Min Yeong-sun; April 29, 1953 – March 12, 2024) was a South Korean-born American artist, curator, and educator.[1][2] She served as professor emeritus at the University of California, Irvine. Her artwork deals with issues including Korean-American identity, politics, personal narrative, and culture.[3][4][5] Min was active in New York City and Los Angeles.[6][4]

Biography[edit]

Yong Soon Min was born on April 29, 1953, in Bugok, South Korea.[1][7][8][9] Her family immigrated to the United States in 1960, settling in Monterey, California.[10] Min met her father for the first time around age eight, because he had moved to the United States earlier than the rest of the family.[4]

Min attended the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), where she received her B.A. degree (1975), M.A. degree (1977), and M.F.A. degree (1979).[8][4] One of her classmates at UC Berkeley was artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.[11] In 1981, Min was part of the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art.[4]

Min was married to artist Allan deSouza in 1992, whom she often collaborated with on artwork.[4][8] They were divorced before her death.[12]

In 2001, she was awarded the Anonymous Was A Woman Award.[5] Other awards include the Fulbright Fellowship (2010–2011), Rockefeller Foundation Grant (2003), and the National Studio Program at P.S.1 (1991).[5]

She was an administrative coordinator for the Asian American Arts Alliance and a member of the Godzilla Asian American Arts Network and GYOPO.[12]

She exhibited her work in biennials held in Havana, Gwangju and Guangzhou.[12]

Yong Soon Min died at her home in Los Angeles, on March 12, 2024, at the age of 70.[12]

Work[edit]

Her early work was primarily graphic or photography based; and by the mid-1980s she started to work more in installation art.[9]

In her 1989 work Make Me, Min photographed herself and split each image in two, cutting out words such as "Exotic" and "Immigrant". It became part of the New Museum portion of the 1990 exhibition "The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s".[12]

Min's installation work deColonization (1991) was centered around a traditional Korean dress in white with gold lettering, placed near four panels that told the story of women in Korea during the United States occupation and an assemblage of Korean book and clay pots filled with rice.[4][13] She used the dress as a metaphor to explore her own history and identity as a Korean-American and the Korean books and clay rice pots allude to Korean Buddhism.[4][13]

In her 1992 series "Defining Moments", Min photographed herself and filled her form with images of the Gwangju Uprising, which was a 1980 protest by South Korean students against a military dictator that was violently suppressed.[12]

A brain hemorrhage that Min suffered in 2011 informed the works in her 2016 show held at the Commonwealth and Council gallery in Los Angeles. The works included AVM: After Venus (Mal)formation, which had a table split into triangles, each with its own word written on it.[12]

At the time of her death, Min's work was featured in an exhibition about the Godzilla Asian American Arts Network at the Eric Firestone Gallery in New York City, while works from "Defining Moments" were included in a survey called "Scratching at the Moon" at ICA LA.[12]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "Yong Soon Min". Oxford Reference. Oxford University Press. Retrieved November 14, 2021.
  2. ^ Kim, Elaine H. (1996). ""Bad Women": Asian American Visual Artists Hanh Thi Pham, Hung Liu, and Yong Soon Min". Feminist Studies. 22 (3): 573–602. doi:10.2307/3178131. ISSN 0046-3663. JSTOR 3178131.
  3. ^ Cotter, Holland (June 19, 1998). "Art In Review: Yong Soon Min 'Bridge of No Return'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved November 14, 2021.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Hallmark, Kara Kelley (2007). Encyclopedia of Asian American Artists. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 125. ISBN 978-0-313-33451-1.
  5. ^ a b c Sorensen, Clark W.; Baker, Donald (June 21, 2012). The Journal of Korean Studies, Volume 17, Number 1 (Spring 2012). Rowman & Littlefield. p. 159. ISBN 978-1-4422-3333-1.
  6. ^ Gomez-Pena, Guillermo; Deitcher, David; Golden, Thelma (1990). The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s. Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art. p. 124. ISBN 978-0-915557-68-4.
  7. ^ Stahr, Celia (October 20, 2006). "Min, Yong Soon". Grove Art Online. doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T2021836. Retrieved March 20, 2024.
  8. ^ a b c "Min, Yong Soon, 1953-". The Library of Congress, LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies. Retrieved November 14, 2021.
  9. ^ a b Machida, Margo (January 23, 2009). Unsettled Visions: Contemporary Asian American Artists and the Social Imaginary. Duke University Press. p. 150. ISBN 978-0-8223-9174-6.
  10. ^ Taus-Bolstad, Stacy (January 1, 2005). Koreans in America. Lerner Publications. p. 66. ISBN 978-0-8225-4874-4.
  11. ^ Cheung, King-Kok (1997). An Interethnic Companion to Asian American Literature. Cambridge University Press. pp. 174–176. ISBN 978-0-521-44790-4.
  12. ^ a b c d e f g h Greenberger, Alex (March 13, 2024). "Yong Soon Min, Artist Who Incisively Analyzed Her Asian American Identity, Dies at 70". ARTnews. Retrieved March 15, 2024.
  13. ^ a b Raynor, Vivien (July 21, 1991). "Art: Introspection and Obsession Fill the 1991 'Marketplace' Show". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved November 14, 2021.

External links[edit]

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