Mayumi Amada
Flower Field, 2008
Plastic bottles, acrylic tubing, blue LED lights, wire, steel rods, washers
Dimensions variable

Friday, July 16, 2010—Sunday, September 26, 2010
Minnesota Artists Exhibition Gallery
Free Exhibition

The fine and tenacious threads that represent generational and societal memory are the foundation for the work of these two Minnesota artists.

Mayumi Amada's exhibition "Kuon: Eternal Flow of Time" focuses on domestic female roles. Using lacework as a basis for an exploration of Kuon (the Japanese word for the Buddhist concept of time), she creates elaborate patterns out of single strands representing the patterns of life. Amada's delicate forms emerge from garbage bags and water bottles often inscribed with messages such as "Everybody Dies" in crisp sampler-style lettering. Her meditations on mortality, ancestry and craft ponder, often humorously, the mundane in life's daily chores and materials.

Bojagi, a traditional Korean art form, inspires Eun-Kyung Suh's work. Bojagi are cloths wrapped around objects for protection and transport. Made from small scraps of material, Bojagi are often decorated to form beautiful patch-worked wrappers. Suh uses this technique to protect memories and experiences. Her installations comprise many pieces containing small bits of information in sheer cloth. Often the packages are silk-screened with images and text, offering clues to their contents. Others, such as "Purple on Thursday," hold wishes in gauzy chiffon fortune cookies.

The Minnesota Artist Exhibition Program (MAEP) is made possible by a generous grant from the Jerome Foundation.

Download .pdf versions of the exhibition brochures:
Mayumi Amada, "Kuon: Eternal Flow of Time" (228kb .pdf)
Eun-Kyung Suh, "The Voided" (260kb .pdf)