August 18, 2022

Spirit of Gift, A Place of Sharing

Hancock Shaker Village, Massachusetts, USA.

On view through November 14, 2022

Each year, Hancock Shaker Village in Massachusetts, USA, invites artists to make new work that responds to this historic site as a means of seeing the Shakers through a new lens. A Spirit of Gift, A Place of Sharing features three artists — Yusuke Asai of Japan, Kimsooja of South Korea, and Pinaree Sanpitak of Thailand — who connect the forms rooted in various Asian sensibilities and aesthetics with the simplicity and spirituality emanating from everything the Shakers made. Like the Shakers, these contemporary artists share an intense concentration of minds, handcrafted intimacy, and unique use of space with their visual language.

Kimsooja makes works that are connected through the theme of sewing or threading, these activities become a metaphor for connecting disparate places and transcending conflicts. While growing up in South Korea, her family moved often near the demilitarized zone as her father worked in the military. In her early installations using bottari (cloth bundles containing belongings when moving) made with traditional Korean bedcovers, the form and the structure of the material symbolized her nomadic existence as an artist working in both the East and West. In A Spirit of Gift, A Place of Sharing, Kimsooja responds to three significant architectural buildings creating works that follow the Shaker story of migration from Europe, settlement, and the building of their own lifestyle. Studying the play of natural light as well as the history of the Laundry & Machine Shop, which dates from 1780, Kimsooja chose 19^th-century domestic textiles from the Shaker collection to hang from clotheslines in the washroom while her ethereal light installation in the ironing room highlights the spiritual importance of seemingly mundane work, offering an ode to Mother Ann Lee’s philosophy of “hands to work, hearts to God.”

— Text by Hancock Shaker Village