Yeesookyung, South Korean artist with fairy fingers

After a breakup, what can you rebuild? The South Korean sculptor Yeesookyung attempts to answer this question which also seems to run through the history of her country, always divided in two, between the North and the South. The artist herself reconciles in her existence a sensitivity that is both Buddhist and Catholic.

Another paradox, religious this one, but which allows him to work on the question of human desire, so fragile and so complex at the same time. Watching his fellow ceramist Lim Hang-Taek, renowned for the quality of his porcelain, work, Yeesookyung noted that during his work, he deliberately broke many creations after their firing, as soon as he detected the slightest defect. A desire for perfection and quality, certainly honorable, but which questions the sculptor.

With his permission, Yeesookyung decides to take the porcelain fragments away. Later, she will get to work with glue and gold leaf. A reference to the Japanese art of kintsugi, who repairs broken ceramics to restore them to their original shape, although marked with a scar highlighted with gold. But the artist goes further. There is no question of reconstituting what existed before: she prefers to give new life to these broken pieces and shards of porcelain. A new, round, generous and overflowing shape emerges. The breakup gave way to a new life.