March 02, 2018
Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art/Smithsonian American Art Museum
For "Armed," Jean Shin collected uniforms from current and former members of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard. She reflects on the relationships between personal histories, collective memories and communal identity. "Jean Shin: Collections" opens March 24 at PMA. Image: From the 2009 installation at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
If you look closely at the photo above, you'll notice those shapes that resemble mosaic tiles are actually articles of military clothing.
The image is of an installation by artist Jean Shin, a Korean-American artist widely acclaimed for her practice of dramatically transforming everyday objects into monumental installations.
"Jean Shin: Collections" will open at the Philadelphia Museum of Art this March. It will feature six large-scale installations made of crowd-sourced materials, as well as a single video.
The installations were constituted from randomly collected clothing and apparel, such as shoes, sweaters and uniforms.
According to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, "These works are utilized by the artist to create a materials-based meditation on identity, society and community, and to address questions of exclusion and inclusion, the familiar and the unfamiliar."
"Unraveling" is one of the installations. It uses donated sweaters that have been disassembled and reconfigured into a web.
The exhibit will open in the Perelman Building on Saturday, March 24. It will be on view through mid-July.
Saturday, March 24, through Sunday, July 15
Open Tuesdays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. | $14-$20 museum admission
Philadelphia Museum of Art's Perelman Building
2525 Pennsylvania Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19130
