Jean Shin

(American/Korean, born 1971)

Jean Shin is a contemporary American-Korean installation artist and sculptor. Often working on large-scale projects, her works consist of an amalgam of everyday objects transformed into reflections on the nature of identity and community. By amassing large quantities of umbrellas, bottles, or pill caps, Shin’s constructions at first “appear homogenous and monumental. Upon closer inspection however, their individuality and variety emerges,” she has said. “The focus of my installations shifts continually between the identity of the individual and that of the group, the single unit and the larger whole, the intimate and the excessive.” Born in in 1971 in Seoul, South Korea, she went on to study at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Shin’s work has been exhibited internationally, notably including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Calvin Klein Collection in Seoul, and the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, among others. In 2014, she was commissioned to create a permanent installation, “Elevated,” for the 63rd street Second Avenue subway platform, which was unveiled in late 2016. The artist lives and works in New York, NY.