"the intimate and the excessive"

I have known of Jean Shin's work for a long time now but in re-visiting her newest work at her website I became totally inspired.


I love, love, love how she uses found everyday objects and through collection, installation, and manipulation uses these objects to comment on our relationships with each other, class, space, and the domestic.


Her fabric works are amazing and she manages to make large scale public works, which I love.

Her biography states:

Jean Shin is nationally recognized for her monumental installations that transform everyday objects into elegant expressions of identity and community. For each project, she amasses vast collections of a particular object—prescription pill bottles, sports trophies, sweaters—which are often sourced through donations from individuals in a participating community. These intimate objects then become the materials for her conceptually rich sculptures, videos and site-specific installations. Distinguished by her meticulous, labor-intensive process, and her engagement of community, Shin’s arresting installations reflect individuals’ personal lives as well as collective issues that we face as a society.

I also enjoy how though she uses a lot of materials and her work varies a ton it manages to always feel simple. In a good way.

and in her statement she say this:

Taken together, the objects appear homogeneous and monumental. Upon closer inspection however, their individuality and variety emerges. The focus of my installations shifts continually between the identity of the individual and that of the group, the single unit and the larger whole, the intimate and the excessive. My elaborate process mirrors these dualities, as objects of mass production and consumerism are transformed by hand and through intense physical labor.

I am inspired. See more.