Artist Jean Shin Interviewed By Jess Wilcox

Abstract

The interview touches on five projects in sculpture parks from 2003 to 2022 that range from a modest waterfront urban city-owned plot to an exquisitely cultivated sprawling mountainous family-run grounds. Through one artist's approach to distinct ecologies, histories, and audiences of the sculpture parks, several shared features come into relief: the importance of care, decolonial imperatives, and a reevaluation of material and social resources.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jess Wilcox

Jess Wilcox is an independent curator focusing on sculpture, ecocritical, and public art and works with the River Valley Arts Collective in the Hudson Valley. Currently, she is organizing the first U.S. museum survey of Scott Burton’s work since his death in 1989 for the Pulitzer Art Foundation, opening September 2024. From 2016 to 2022, she was curator and director of exhibitions at Socrates Sculpture Park. There she curated dozens of exhibitions, including Hélio Oiticica Subterranean Tropicália Projects: PN15; Sink or Swim: Climate Futures; Guadalupe Maravilla: Planeta Abuelx; MONUMENTS NOW; Chronos Cosmos: Deep Time, Open Space; Virginia Overton: Built; Nari Ward: G.O.A.T., again, and the Socrates Annual exhibitions. During her tenure, she organized the first single-artist exhibitions in the park’s thirty-three-year history, and initiated a program to travel newly commissioned works to other venues. From 2011 to 2015 she worked at the Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum organizing public programs and public artworks and where she co-curated Agitprop!, a sixty-artist exhibition of historical and contemporary political art. She has organized shows at Abrons Art Center, ISCP and SculptureCenter, among other venues. She has a BA from Barnard College and a master’s degree from Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies.

Jean Shin

Jean Shin is known for her sprawling and public sculptures, transforming accumulations of discarded objects into powerful monuments that interrogate our complex relationship between material consumption, collective identity, and community engagement. Often working cooperatively within a community, Shin amasses vast collections of everyday objects—Mountain Dew bottles, mobile phones, 35mm slides—while researching their history of use, circulation, and environmental impact. Born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised in the United States, Shin works in Brooklyn and Hudson Valley, New York. Her work has been widely exhibited and collected in over 150 major museums and cultural institutions, including solo exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC; and Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, where in 2020 she was the first Korean-American woman artist featured in a solo exhibition. Shin has received numerous awards, including the Frederic Church Award. Her body of work includes several permanent public artworks commissioned by major agencies and municipalities, most recently for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Second Ave Subway in New York City. She is a tenured adjunct professor at Pratt Institute and holds an honorary doctorate from New York Academy of Art.