Soap sculptures by renowned Korean artist unveiled at SOAS
An array of soap sculptures by the renowned Korean visual artist Meekyoung Shin have been installed at SOAS, as part of “Korean Classic: In Use”, a site-specific project across London.
Exhibited in public toilets across the SOAS campus, the sculptures gradually change over time through touch, challenging traditional ideas about how art should last and be valued.
Meekyung Shin's is one of Korea’s best-known artists whose innovative practice has won her widespread acclaim.
The used sculptures will later be displayed at the Korean Cultural Centre UK in an exhibition “The Unclassified” in September, which explores what escapes the museum's systems of preservation, recording, archiving, and classification. Carrying traces of their time on the SOAS campus, the sculptures will be shown not as fixed objects, but as records of use, change, and lived experience.
Charlotte Horlyck, Professor of the History of Korean Art & Head of School of Arts who also supported on the project said: “I am delighted to be working with Meekyung Shin and the Korean Cultural Centre on this prestigious project. Meekyung Shin's is one of Korea’s best-known artists whose innovative practice has won her widespread acclaim.”
For over three decades, Shin has explored themes of transformation, replication, and cultural translation through sculptures made from soap. For “Korean Classic: In Use”, the soap sculptures were inspired by classical European sculptures that have long featured in Korean art education.
Staff, students and visitors can find and experience the sculptures in the first floor toilets of the Paul Webley Wing, and the second cubicle in the gender-neutral toilets on the ground floor of the SOAS Main Building.
