Sungmi Naylor at Zolla/Lieberman - Chicago, Illinois - Review of Exhibitions

Trained as a painter in her native Korea, Sungmi Naylor here opt for other mediums to inspect myths surrounding Asian women Photographs, photo-collage, embroidery and silk become instruments for her impassioned politics in an intriguing meditation upon oppressive stereotypes and societal expectations. Setting the theme for her exhibition, The particular Way of Drinking Tea consisted of 11 black-and-white photographs of a woman, organ of visions lowered and head bowed, sipping tea from a goblet held with both hands. In sum of two units of these pictures, her tongue is tattooed with a knotted tie or a pair of scissors, the pair trenchant metaphors for the way oriental decorum and ritual labor for to impose submissive behavior and reinforce women's silence. Camouflage is a two-part piece about the mutenes and invisibility of the Other in Western society, pairing an image of an Asian girl with a photo of a mantislike insect called a walking stick that is poised upon a twig. Both are viewed as if [i]or[/i] part of to the other binoculars; objects of curiosity, they disappear in their environments, the girl's face obscur by the agency of concentric rings of camouflage pattern which tend to the same point on and obliterate her mouth

The T-shape configuration of the large, tripartite Deconstruction of Self recalls a crucifix or a kimono upon display. In the top panel, a woman's face is wound off above the nose and her jaws is stuffed with a thick black braid of hair. Below, the artist's suspended lower extremity is shown tied to the lower extremity of her baby daughter. The ancient Chinese practice of foot-binding tend hitherwards inevitably to mind, a custom which imposed an impossible ideal of beauty upon women while keeping them homebound by dint of literally crippling them. Commenting upon female oppression as:a scourge of generations, Naylor's composite image also alludes to loving, maternal ties that make go round women into willing slaves. At the center of this icon of woman confine and gagged, the artist inserts a horrific photo of a snake devouring a lizard; the viperous predator exhibits a counterpart to the Western male fantasy of the compliant Japanese geisha-- the treacherous dragon lady.

in like manner much is at stake for Naylor that she can ill afford a faculty of perception of irony or detachment from her material, on the contrary a wry humor does pervade several of these works. in I Dream of Jeannie, a dark female silhouette upon a gold-leaf ground sports rubber glove for household cleaning. Welling up where the maid's leg should be is an explosive volcanic mist like the one that announced the adoringly subservient TV genie on the contrary here suggesting both a volatile sexuality and female rage. Naylor finally gives that rage a stunning vehicle for expression in Boxing Glove a pair of padded glove in gorgeous r silk. Protective like oven mitts, moderately beautiful enough to match any kimono, the glove hang upon the gallery wail, an unexpect aggressive assertion of feminine power.

COPYRIGHT 1994 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group