JuYeon Kim: The In Between

JuYeon Kim: The In Between, originally uploaded by afsart.

During the spring quarter 2010 10 students and one graduate assistant from the Savannah campus worked with visiting artist JuYeon Kim to create the Cave Installation for the "In-Between" exhibit.

Inspired by the artist's and students' interpretation of the eighth-century Buddhist text "The Tibetan Book of the Dead," these ambitious works signify the range of human experience, reminding us of the volatility of the physical world and our illusory perception of it.

Seeking to bridge the gap between divergent cultural traditions, Kim began studying the bardo—the "in-between" space in Tibetan Buddhist practice. From this study she set forth on the journey of creating two sculptural installations for "The In-Between."

The cave installation consists of six hardwood panels (representing the Six Realms of rebirth) arranged to form a hexagonally shaped interior space. The walls of the cave-like interior are covered with sculpted figures in both high and low relief. Kim developed the smoothly polished wood exterior of Untitled_ci10 to contrast with the encrusted interior in order to provoke a sense of disorientation. She notes: "I try to create unusual environments that bring out viewers' primitive inner feelings and draw them back to the basic question of who we are."

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