Yong Soon Min
b. 1953, Bugok, Korea | d. 2024
Kindred Distance 1
Kindred Distance 2
Kindred Distance 3
Kindred Distance 4, 1995
Dye sublimation print
Courtesy Yong Soon Min Estate

Yong Soon Min’s Kindred Distance is a four-part work of digitally processed photographs taken at the South Korean Reunification Observatory near the Korean DMZ. The work focuses on North Korean household products displayed at the Observatory, ending with a desolate image of tourists gazing at mannequins. The words “whe” (phonetically representing 왜, meaning “why”), “where,” and “아워홈” (“our home”) are embedded in the images, accentuating the estrangement produced by the exhibition and its alienating framing of Korean others. The images and text reflect Min’s ambivalence toward the essentialist notion of home underlying the rhetoric of Korean reunification.

Known for her innovative contribution to American installation art in the 1990s, Min’s work investigates the ongoing Korean War, colonialism, memory, and diasporic identity.