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Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Haji Oh, Three Flowers, 2004

Haji Oh b. 1976

Three Flowers, 2004
Grandmother’s Hanbok, silk
tie-dye, brush dyeing, embroidery
55 1/8 x 59 in
140 x 150 cm
Copyright The Artist
'Three Flowers' (2004) combines Oh’s memories of her grandmother and mother’s experiences, contained in one colorful dress created out of her late grandmother’s chima chogori. Oh carefully unraveled sections of...
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"Three Flowers" (2004) combines Oh’s memories of her grandmother and mother’s experiences, contained in one colorful dress created out of her late grandmother’s chima chogori. Oh carefully unraveled sections of her grandmother’s two-piece garment, then resewed it into one connected dress. Although she wasn’t able to hear her grandmother’s stories directly before she died, Oh felt she could weave her grandmother’s unspoken memories through her own by creating works using her grandmother’s belongings. The artist meticulously embroidered a delicate flower pattern through the original fabric of her grandmother’s dress, and finished the work by brush-painting brightly colored flowers in red, pink, and blue dye on the inside of the dress. Oh chose to paint lotus flowers, as a nod to her mother’s experience growing up in Japan, where her teacher referred to her as as nenashigusa—a plant with no roots, floating atop the water like a lotus.

Oh plays with the saturation of color as a device for evoking the different degrees of and layers of a memory. The dyed interior is visible through the sheer white fabric of the dress, forming a contrast between the muted exterior and the bright colors hidden beneath. When it is installed in space, the dress naturally falls open at certain points, drawing the viewers’ gaze into the brighter folds of the garment’s interior while simultaneously rendering it inaccessible. The fabric’s sculptural structure is emphasized, mirroring the artist’s understanding of memory as a three-dimensional space. The artist explains:

When my grandmother passed away, my mother kept her chima chogori without disposing of it… One day, I strongly felt my grandmother's presence from it. The chogori held untold stories, the things my grandmother didn't speak about and I couldn't ask. I realized the dress harbored the 'silent memories.' I thought about tracing the history of a woman whose story remains untold, through this chogori.
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