JEAN SHIN | CLOTHESLINE 2

Courtesy of the artist 

Jean Shin is a contemporary artist best known for her monumental installations, which transform everyday objects into works of art, expressive of identity and community. For each project, she collects multiple examples of a specific object, which later become the materials of her sculptures, installations, and videos.

Born in Seoul, South Korea in 1971, Shin moved Maryland at the age of six. During her senior year in high school, Shin entered the Presidential Scholars Program competition and won a full scholarship to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where she later received her BFA in painting and MS in Art History and Criticism. She then worked as a curatorial assistant at the Whitney Museum in New York for two years; since 1998, she has worked at the Pratt Institute as an adjunct professor.

In her work, Shin references a wide range of art historical precedents, ranging from minimalism with its repetition of forms, to feminism with its focus on craft techniques, to Arte Povera with its use of mundane and commonplace materials. Her stock of cast-off materials includes old shoes, broken umbrellas, broken ceramics, prescription pill bottles, sports trophies, and more. She then enters into a process of deconstruction, alteration, and restoration that results in monumental and unique projects.

Her work has been exhibited at museums and galleries internationally, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Calvin Klein Collection in Seoul, the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, The Montclair Art Museum and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, among others. Shin has received many large-scale commissions for permanent installations by major public agencies and city programs. Most recently, she installed “Elevated” at the MTA’s Second Avenue Subway at the 63rd Street in Manhattan.

Her work has been widely exhibited in major museums, including a 2004 solo project at MOMA, of which this piece is part. Shin has received numerous awards in recognition for her excellence, including two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships in Architecture and Environmental Structures (2008) and Sculpture (2003), The Korea Arts Foundation of America, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and more.

Currently, she resides and works in Brooklyn.