As an artist committed to feminist issues and supported by traditional Confucian ethics, Yun Suk-nam has developed a vibrant art practice that explores the position of woman in a patriarchal society. Concerned with the position of Korean women, Yun's work is based on personal expressions of a political position which is inclusive. Drawing on her cultural traditions, she utilises familiar objects that perform a subversive function in her installations.

Pink sofa was made especially for the 'Second Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art' (1996), at Queensland Art Gallery, and continues Yun's exploration of themes and issues around feminism. The installation incorporates sculptural elements, such as the rigid female figure that is painted with the details of dress and features. The pink sofa stands as a metaphor for woman: luxurious, curved and soft. Yun says:

Taking chairs that have been salvaged from trash, produced in a factory, or that I myself have made, and upholstered them with fabric and fitting them with steel legs, I turn them into personifications of women. I cover the chairs mainly in brilliant, intensely coloured Korean silk because of the strange allure of the fabric's hues, the pink, indigo and yellow. As for the steel legs fitted on the chairs, they appear stable, but, in their knife-like appearance, also express the fierceness of women. In form and material, the chair legs are related to 'eunjango', the small knives that Korean women commonly carried for self-defence during the Chosun Dynasty.1

Bathed in a pink glow from the lights and the pink walls, this installation emanates a feeling of claustrophobia. Surrounding the sofa on the floor are pink and white plastic balls, creating a surface that prevents access to the sofa. Placed on the sofa is a fractured sculpture of a woman. Crouching, she is an assemblage of flat painted boards decorated with fragments of ornamental mother-of-pearl inlay. Standing rigidly on the right is another flat figure painted in washed pink hues firmly embedded on to a solid heavy metal stand. Of the work Yun says: 'Pink is an uncertainty of emotion, particularly of women, which stemmed from the feeling that they could exist nowhere.'²

Pink sofa is an exploration of female expectations and the gradual shifts that take place within the domestic and public spheres during the process of empowerment. Yun says, 'I am seeking solutions to women's situations both without - in critiquing representations used to enforce women's limited options — and from within — via women's collective assertion of full personhood.'³ Yun Suk-nam is known in Korea for her pioneering work exploring women's issues and gender politics. Her particular use of installation has meant that she is able to create personal allegorical environments which also place her within a wider international feminist practice.

Endnotes

1. Kim Sun-jung, 'Baubles, bangles and beads: Interviews with four Korean women artists', Art Asia Pacific, vol.3, no.3, 1996, p.66.
2. Yun Suk-nam, quoted in Queensland Art Gallery curatorial files, Brisbane.
3. Yun Suk-nam, The Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art [artist's statement insert], Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1996.