KISSSSS

^{KISSSSS by Yong Soon Min, Installation view, 2024, Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) Gallery, UC Irvine. Photo by Yubo Dong.}

KISSSSS, Yong Soon Min, Contemporary Arts Center, UCI, October 5 – Dec 14, 2024.

Throughout her career, Yong Soon Min examined the impact of the Korean War (1950–present), particularly the ongoing division between North and South Korea at the 38th parallel. KISSSSS (2024) explores how the entangled geopolitical relations between North and South Korea, China, the Soviet Union, United Nations, and United States created this liminal space known as the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Although KISSSSS remains unfinished, the installation includes conceptual elements and photographs from a photo shoot the artist oversaw shortly before her passing. 


Two other works featured in this exhibition, Both Sides Now (2018) and Still/Incessant (2018/2024), reflect Min’s continued interest in the DMZ from different perspectives. Both Sides Now are prints of collages that Min created with postcards purchased during her travels to the Joint Security Area in South Korea and North Korea in the 1990s. She spliced and reassembled the postcards to show alternating depictions of both nations simultaneously. Still/Incessant features a mural sized print of a collage at the back of the gallery. The large-scale format situates viewers in the room where the armistice that established the DMZ was signed in 1953, and emphasizes the ongoing impact of the historical event. This image is also the subject of the Still/Incessant (book) which is Min’s last finished artwork.


Artist, activist, educator, and curator Yong Soon Min joined the Department of Art faculty at UC Irvine in 1993 and became Professor Emerita in 2014. After earning her BA, MA, and MFA degrees in art at UC Berkeley, she moved to New York. There, she became a key figure in the emerging Asian American art community during the 1980s and ‘90s, and participated in Godzilla: Asian American Art Network and the Asian American Arts Alliance. Her work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and internationally. Min died from breast cancer on March 12, 2024, at her home in Los Angeles in the company of family and friends. 

• This installation is co-sponsored by the UC Irvine Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art and the UC Irvine Claire Trevor School of the Arts with lead support generously provided by the Center for Critical Korean Studies and Claire Trevor Society.