This interview originally appeared in Musée Magazine Issue 13: Women

ANDREA BLANCH: When did you begin photographing?

YOON JI SEON: My first solo exhibition was in 1999, and from that time I’ve done a lot of photo work.

ANDREA: Did you go to art school or are you self-taught? Did you start out as a photographer? I want to know the progression.

YOON JI: I graduated from an art school called Hannam University in Daejeon, a city in the mid- dle of South Korea. I started with painting, but it was too difficult. Because art has a long history, and many different things have been done already. Monet and Cézanne had already done everything that I wanted to do. Every time I painted, I felt like I was copying their work. So I started to use photography, because you can see what you want exactly from the photograph.

ANDREA: What was your very first photograph?

YOON JI: I was posing with my hands. I made my hands look like a vagina. It was my hands with men’s legs, because men’s legs are very hairy.

ANDREA: OK. So, how did you make the transition to using thread?

YOON JI: I had been using photography for a long time and sometimes, I would make a little hole in the photo and put some hair. I planted hair in the photo and I’d also make tiny holes in the photo with an acupuncture needle. It was hard because it’s so tiny, and I had to make thousands and thousands of holes. I just accidentally saw a sewing machine, and you know, there’s a needle in the sewing machine. So I thought it would be easier to make holes in the photo using a sewing machine.

ANDREA: Did you sew before?

YOON JI: I never learned how to sew with a sew- ing machine. I tried to make stitches, and I made lot of mistakes. I mostly learned from the mistakes. It’s not normal sewing, like for clothes. It’s very different from that kind of sewing. The sewing machine broke many times. The man who fixes the machine insisted that I stop. I was torturing the sewing machine. It’s not a common way to use it. At the begin- ning, I’d stitch by hand, but those were small pieces. Now that my work is getting bigger and thicker, I mostly use the machine.

ANDREA: How long is the process? For example, the big one on the back wall [Rag Face #14001 (2014)], how long did that take?

YOON JI: I spent about 15 hours per day, for three months. I hurt my neck from that work. And I had insomnia, because I couldn’t stop. Imagine, the sewing machine’s on this side, and the work is this big, and I had to roll it while I was working. My room is very small, so I couldn’t unroll it to see the work. I had to remember everything I did. That’s why I couldn’t stop working. And that’s why I didn’t sleep.

ANDREA: You address Korean culture, and women in Korean culture, and how cosmetic surgery promotes the idea of sameness and universal beauty. Do you think this is a Western influence?

YOON JI: You mean plastic surgery?

ANDREA: Yes.

YOON JI: There is a Korean saying. When somebody hears something they don’t want to hear, they say, “Stitch that mouth.” I got the idea of stitching from that saying. Also, when I was in Ireland in 2003, I read a newspaper from Great Britain and there was an ar- ticle about an Iraqi artist. He stitched his eyes and his mouth, with a real needle, because he was about to be sent from Britain to his own country. He was protesting against the government. I got the idea of stitching form that article as well. At the beginning, I didn’t think about how plastic surgery is connected to my work. But as I was doing it, I realized that people could make the connection with the plastic surgery. But that wasn’t an intention at the beginning. I think that plas- tic surgery is like shopping. It’s like a shopping trend.

ANDREA: What was your intent in making some of the faces in the pieces purposely grotesque? What attracts you to the grotesque?

YOON JI: I didn’t just want beauty. I’m not against beauty, but I didn’t want to put a general beauty in my work. I wanted to put some humor. One of my nephews, when he saw the work, said, “Aunt, you have noodles coming out from your nose.” It was fun, and I wanted to put some humor in it. It’s also a mixture of timeline. I like to mix the timeline.

ANDREA: What do you mean by “mixing the timeline”?

YOON JI: I’ll give you two examples. I once used bones of pigs and cows. And I made a hole and plant- ed my hair on the bone. Usually, if you think about our body, we have bones, and then we have skin, and then we have hair. But I just planted hair onto the bone. One more example, I had a seventh generation grandfather. He’s an artist from a long time ago. There was a portrait of him, and I planted my pubic hair onto his eyes, so it looked like a vagina. Usually with DNA, we have a grandfather and father and then me. But I went back to before his ancestors. So it’s not the way time flows, from the past to the future. That’s what I meant by mixing the timeline.

ANDREA: Do you consider yourself a photographer or a photographic artist?

YOON JI: I don’t want to be defined. I just do what I want to do.

ANDREA: Do you think it will always include photography?

YOON JI: I like the saying from Man Ray: “I paint what cannot be photographed. I photograph what I do not wish to paint.” It explains my work very much.

ANDREA: Why do you keep doing self-portraiture instead of choosing a model?

YOON JI: Many people ask that. Why self-portrait, right? Like the novel, The Scarlet Letter, during the Jo- seon Dynasty in Korea, in the 17th Century, there was a punishment if you painted your face with black ink. Because we think that hurting our body or destroying our body is not beautiful and very disrespectful to our parents. If you do something like that, it’s like a punishment. It’s a taboo. I once planned a solo exhibition but it was cancelled because people were scared of what I did. The other reason why I do self-portraits is because that’s the easiest model I could find.

To read more, check out our 13th Issue: Women

May 6 From Our Archives: Yoon Ji Seon

May 6 National Photography Month: KangHee Kim

May 5 Alfonso Fonseca Captures Echoes of Past Crimes

Related Posts