The solo exhibition of Hijo Nam at Space776 in New York refuses to be confined to a single medium or form. In this presentation, fabric works, mother-of-pearl moon jars, and painterly canvases intersect and converse, creating a polyphonic space that explores the origins of human existence, the spiritual realm, and the sustaining force of maternal love. Nam’s art weaves Korean tradition, contemporary experimentation, material tactility, philosophical thought, ritual memory, and personal myth.

Fabric has long been central to Nam’s practice. The repeated acts of tearing, stitching, layering, and mending are not mere techniques but metaphors for life itself. Wounds and healing, death and rebirth, separation and reunion are inscribed into cloth as both visual and tactile experiences. Fabric enfolds the viewer like a swaddling cloth, recalling the ritual textiles of shamans, mediating between visible and invisible worlds. In its trembling folds and shifting light, fabric becomes a threshold where time, memory, and spiritual currents converge. Yet this exhibition extends beyond fabric. Including mother-of-pearl moon jars situates Nam’s work within the lineage of Korean aesthetics while expanding it to a cosmic dimension. The moon jar, regarded as a symbol of purity and wholeness, historically embodied infinity through emptiness. Nam transforms the vessel into a radiant container of beginnings by embedding mother-of-pearl. Its iridescent surface refracts like moonlight, evoking time cycles, maternal embrace, and the fragile tension between permanence and transience. Her paintings introduce another stratum. Layers of brushstrokes, traces, erasures, and overlays do not simply stand for but record. Each canvas becomes a site of inscription where memory, ritual, and personal myth unfold. These works function as both image and object, surface, and body, extending the tactility of fabric and the solidity of porcelain into the pictorial realm. Nam’s abstraction is never reduced to formal experiment or empty imagery. Instead, it is rooted in a concrete investigation into ancient human origins and spiritual experience. She has looked to understand how humanity interpreted life and death, inscribed communal origins into cloth, vessels, and walls, and kept connections with the unseen. Thus, her abstraction is anchored: it draws upon ancient narratives and spiritual experiences to open all stories. Crucially, Nam’s inquiry has not still been abstracting or symbolic. She undertook direct field research at Lake, a place deeply tied to shamanic traditions, in pursuit of the origins of ancient shamans’ sophisticated philosophies and knowledge systems. She cross-verified historical texts published across different countries, building a solid scholarship foundation for her artistic inquiries. Beyond academic rigor, Nam has also embodied shamanic practices—performing meditative rituals that look to dissolve the boundaries of time and space. This dual commitment to research and practice lends her work a distinctly anthropological and experiential weight, situating her art at the confluence of ancient knowledge systems and contemporary artistic practice. In this light, fabric, moon jars, and paintings no longer appear as separate media but as interwoven voices. Softness, solidity, and fluidity converge to form a cosmology of origins. Origin here is not a fixed point in the past but a cyclical present, continuously reborn—a primordial ground to which we are invited to return. At the heart of Nam’s art lies the force of maternal love. For her, it is not a private symbol but a universal energy, the foundation of existence. Fabric enfolds like a mother’s embrace, the moon jar radiates cyclical protection, and the painting inscribes the scars and traces of memory. Maternal love thus becomes more than a gendered metaphor—it becomes the archetype of origin itself.

This exhibition is both a declaration and a question. Where have we come from, what binds us together, and where must we return? Nam does not leave these questions abstract; she stages them as lived experiences. Visitors walk along the textures of cloth, meet the spectral shimmer of mother-of-pearl, and inscribe their own memories upon painted surfaces. In this moment, the exhibition expands into a collective meditation on spiritual continuity and humanity’s ancient origins.

At Space776, Threads of Origin resists the speed and consumption logic dominating contemporary art. It is not a regression into the past but a re-weaving of the present through countless threads of beginning. Through abstraction rooted in spiritual experience and historical investigation, Nam translates ancient knowledge into the language of art. Her work becomes where all stories open, bringing us face to face with life and death, memory and healing, maternal love, and the power of origin.

 

 

References

• Geertz, C. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.

• Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press.

• Lévi-Strauss, C. (1963). Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books.

• Turner, V. (1969). The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing.

• Warner, M. (2000). No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling, and Making Mock. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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Artist Note | Hijo Nam

 

 

For me, art has always begun with a single question: origin. Where do we come from? What binds us together? Where must we return? These questions are not abstract concepts but lived inquiries that resurface daily in the studio, each time I touch materials. My works are both answers and new questions, pathways that open into deeper layers of reflection.

 

At the philosophical root of my practice lies the Buddhist concept of Bulibiril (不二非一), which teaches that what appears divided or opposed is, at its essence, one. Sky and earth, life and death, light and shadow, tradition and modernity, East and West—though they may appear as opposites, they ultimately flow into one continuum. My work seeks to embody this principle, weaving together what seems disparate into a shared origin.

 

In this pursuit, I place no boundaries on materials. Fabric, wood, iron, ceramics, lacquer, canvas, and shell all serve as sites of transformation. Rather than confining myself to a medium, I follow the physicality of each material, experimenting with its properties and layering processes that uncover unforeseen resonances. These experiments are not merely technical challenges but acts of research, philosophical inquiry, and spiritual practice for me.

 

In my fabric works, tearing, stitching, and binding trace human fragility and resilience—wounds and healing, rupture and repair. Fabric carries the tactile weight of time and recalls the ritual textiles of shamans that bridged visible and invisible realms. The mother-of-pearl moon jars unite sea and sky: the solidity of porcelain with the shifting iridescence of nacre, embodying both permanence and impermanence. My paintings are not representations but accumulations of gestures and erasures, inscriptions where memory and myth are recorded and preserved.

 

My practice moves between experimentation and research, ritual and study. I traveled to Lake Baikal to investigate shamanic traditions at their source and cross-verified historical texts from multiple countries, grounding my work in anthropology and lived experience. At the same time, I incorporate meditative and ritual practices into daily life—acts of silence, repetition, and stillness that dissolve boundaries of time and space. For me, creation is inseparable from inquiry and practice; together they converge into the forms I make.

 

At the center of this work is always maternal energy—not simply biological or symbolic, but a universal force that makes existence possible. Fabric envelops like a mother’s embrace, moon jars radiate cyclical protection, and paintings bear the scars and traces of collective memory. To me, maternity is another name for origin.

 

In 2015, I became the first Asian woman artist to hold a solo exhibition at the National Archaeological Museum of Greece. To exhibit within a space filled with the legacies of ancient civilization was a turning point: it revealed to me that my questions of origin transcend geography and culture, touching the universal condition of humanity. My upcoming exhibition in New York continues this trajectory, weaving together experimentation with materials and philosophical exploration to reinterpret ancient narratives for the present.

 

Ultimately, I see art as the act of opening a door. A work opens questions, memories, and relations. Ancient narratives and spiritual experiences are reborn in the present, and the viewer, standing before the work, is invited to confront their own beginnings.

 

Where do we come from? What binds us together? Where must we return? These questions are both the beginning and the end of my art, the door I continually seek to open through every work I make.