A Year of Gifts Commences with Seulgi Lee’s Chuseok
In the first video of a new series in collaboration with Jo Malone London on the meaning of gifting festivals across Asia and its diaspora, the artist explains how the gift of a Korean blanket shaped her recent practice
In the first video of a new series in collaboration with Jo Malone London on the meaning of gifting festivals across Asia and its diaspora, the artist explains how the gift of a Korean blanket shaped her recent practice
Marking Frieze’s first art fair in Asia, the new video series ‘A Year of Gifts’ traces a calendar of celebrations from Korea’s Chuseok to Diwali’s ‘festival of lights’, exploring the relationship between tradition, gift-giving and creativity.
Though she has lived in Paris for three decades, Seoul-born artist Seulgi Lee explains she fondly remembers Chuseok, the mid-autumn harvest festival that is one of the most important in the Korean calendar. A time for gifting, feasting and family, Lee recalls the gift her father gave her one Chuseok – a fan he had painted himself by hand. It was a more recent gift – of a traditional Korean quilted blanket – that was to spark a new direction in the artist’s practice. Adorned with colours that reminded Lee of Chuseok, the blanket inspired her to consider the meanings embedded in colour in Korean tradition, and consider the ways this object and traditional proverbs were tied up in every day life, leading to a major body of work which has featured in her exhibitions at Incheon Art Platform in Korea and her forthcoming show at Mendes Wood DM, Brussels. ‘I realised that sharing this idea would be the best gift I could give to the world’, she reflects.
For Jo Malone London, the gift of fragrance is the gift of memories. Discover more at www.jomalone.co.uk
Watch the rest of the series and explore Jeremy Chan's Lunar New Year traditions and Erika Kobayashi’s White Day souvenirs here.
