Meet Shin So-ra (신소라), an artist who creates textile based semi-three dimensional art. Shin is a creative and thoughtful artist (and person) who creates semi-three-dimensional works based on the textile. Shin uses her art as a way of expressing stories about people and love using a variety of different materials such as lenticular weaving, staples, zippers and resin. Her work has been exhibited nine solo exhibitions and at approximately 100 art fairs and group exhibitions internationally at locations such as New York, LA, Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam and China). Some of her works have been displayed on the 3D interactive billboard in Times Square, New York. Shin has won several prizes in Korea and has been part of several artist residencies in Korea.
Shin is currently in an artist residency in Seoul, called ‘Banghwa Space for Creating Culture and the Art’ provided by Kangseo-gu. Currently, Shin teases, I’m preparing samples to collaborate with my favourite brand.
Shin’s three-dimensional mixed-media works utilise lenticular forms and weaving techniques to symbolise our different facets: ‘the discrepancy between the me projected to others and the genuine me’. For Shin, the warp and weft threads that cross under and over each other are akin to how we build relationships and multiplicities of understanding, beyond right and wrong.
The Love series is inspired by staples: ‘When you use a stapler, one staple breaks from the perfect block to embrace another object. It also becomes bent in the process, which I liken to the sacrifice required by love,’ she says. ‘From a distance you see a smooth, perfectly curved heart. Look closely and you can see that there is a pixel at the edge of the heart. This represents the “incomplete love” of human relationships. By this I mean that relationships are never perfect – because people are different – we can, however, fill this gap in each other.’
Of the Wave series Shin shared: ‘There are two faces in this work. They go in opposite ways. This part goes in, and this part goes out. This is how we fill the gaps in each other.’ She concludes: ‘Our differences are, ironically, our blessing.’
Talking of sources of inspiration, Shin admires the famous quote from Pablo Picasso: ‘Every child is an artist’. I love children’s goofiness, questions that don’t make sense, and ideas beyond the frames, which all make my brain creative. When approaching a new piece of art, Shin tries to make a plan before starting but also shared that she tries not to stick to this and enjoys exploring different ways of meeting her goal. Shin shared with me that “a trial for the artist is a beautiful journey apart from success or failure. Journeys and know-hows that I achieved during the past artwork will be shown in the recent piece. In this sense, I can’t help loving my recent work. Since every works used to be my recent work for once, it means it used to be my favourite one for at least once after they were created. I’m glad they won’t be jealous.”
When facing creative blocks, Shin shared that she needs to always be in the studio, “even if I’m just chilling. Sometimes I found better places than expected when I was lost. Those experiences were helpful to not to become too much emotional when I face the unexpected creative blocks during the work process. I also need to be healthy. When I fail in this I cannot continue my work.”
Shin’s advice to aspiring artists: Write down your goal in a big piece of paper, and forget about it for a while. And focus on small today. The art is not something you need to achieve fast, but need to do for a long time. You might find it vain when you meet the goal, so please enjoy your process. That is the most important point to live as an artist as long as you can.