Jiseon Lee Isbara will speak about her inquiries addressed in her work and the use of visual languages and processes developed over time to communicate her concepts and emotions. Her work mirrors her life and its complexities of a displaced person in two countries: conversant in the language and culture of both places, but not considered a full-fledged member of either one. Through her work, she embodies two cultures, times and identities colliding and merging together.

SHORT BIO

Jiseon Lee Isbara is an artist and educator who serves as the Provost at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, CA. She exhibits nationally, engages with viewers through lectures and discussions, and collaborates with and contributes to the community by serving as various roles for regional and national art and education organizations. Amplified by her experience as a first-generation immigrant, she engages with socially and culturally charged dialogue through the accumulated aesthetics, materials and processes she has garnered as an emigrant from her native culture. Through her artwork, Jiseon questions the congruity around her emotions and cultural topics around her. Jiseon earned her MFA in Fibers, one from Colorado State University and one from Ewha Woman’s University, Seoul, South Korea. She is Professor and Dean of Academic Affairs at Oregon College of Art and Craft.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Through simple, essential techniques and fluid everyday textile materials, I address the complexity of current cultural discourse through lens of my experience as an immigrant. Through my work, I question the congruity around my emotions and cultural topics around me. Magnified by current cultural and political environment, my identity as a first-generation immigrant who is a woman and person of color is unpleasantly reminded every day. While illegible texts in my work represent the displacement, I feel about the language in my adapted culture, obsessive planning is a habitual practice I embody in my work. Texts and forms vulnerably convey the messages or questions I ponder and the practice repeats with anxiety and obsession yet with routine iteration. Thus, mundane and repetitive action plays a large role in my work. The accumulated aesthetics, materials and processes I have garnered as an emigrant from my native culture engage in a dialogue with the uncomfortable cultural topics with which we live. My work references traditional and historical forms; the coarse texture of the threads creates the surface and structure of the fabric, straps tied with haste or meticulous care embed meaning with no apparent logic and tiny painstakingly stitched fabric pieces reference mending and therefore labor and time. Slow and time-consuming process opposes my emotion over the subject embodied in my work. As two cultures, times and identities collide and merge together, I intend to create a sense of order and disorder, old and new, anxiety and serenity, displacement and settlement, ambiguity and clarity.