DISPLACED, 2023

Dirt, plexiglass, project remnants (Korean celadon pottery shards; denim scraps; Mountain Dew Plastic bottle remnants; salvaged cables, cords, and ethernet plugs), and studio debris

Displaced: Crate #1 22 1/2 x 44 x 29 1/4 in
Displaced: Crate #2 35 x 27 x 20 5/8 in
Displaced: Crate #3 39 x 48 1/2 x 7 in
Displaced: Crate #4 13 x 52 5/8 x 33 in
Displaced: Crate #5 8 7/8 x 53 5/8 x 17 5/8 in

Installation as part of Women Reframe American Landscape
Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Catskill, NY
May 6 - October 29, 2023
New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain CT
November 18, 2023 - March 31, 2024
Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI
May 4 - August 25, 2024

Jean Shin: Displaced

For the exhibition Women Reframe American Landscape, Shin turned her focus onto the environmental consequences of the art and museum world, largely characterized by traveling exhibitions that require cross-country shipping and robust wooden art crates, which are often disposed of afterwards. Displaced, a “time capsule”, consists of an art shipping crate previously used by the Thomas Cole Site to travel artwork and artmaking materials once used by Thomas Cole and Emily Cole. Shin filled the crate with displaced earth as well as scraps from the creation of her own artwork. For the artist, this installation connects artists working past and present and acknowledges the carbon footprint of artmaking and exhibitions. Displaced brings, “a self-critical lens to the struggle to maintain a zero waste art practice,” and makes visible the way our earth and soil have become forever polluted with microplastics and consumer waste. Shin addresses landscape in this geological age of the Anthropocene, where human activity has substantially altered the environment and the paradox of artists and museums working with an ecological approach.

Selected Press

Related Works