Language
Party in the Peach Orchard
Yi Insun
This section presents the works of Yi Insun, an artist who expands the painterly language through the medium of embroidery.
Drawing from symbolic imagery found in folk paintings, traditional tales, comic books, and tarot cards, Yi composes her visual narratives using industrial machine embroidery. Traditional motifs such as tigers, peaches, swallows, and snakes appear throughout her works—not as mere reproductions, but as reimagined symbols infused with contemporary sensibilities and social emotions.
Her embroidery transcends ornamentation. The tightly stitched and repeated threads, reminiscent of tattoos, become a medium through which the artist inscribes her emotions and memories. The unique texture of embroidery blurs the boundaries between figures, animals, and backgrounds, allowing reality and imagination to fluidly intermingle on the canvas.
This exhibition features seven works spanning from Yi’s early pieces to her most recent creations.
Party in the Peach Orchard stands out for its vivid colors and playful humor, while Horn and Bone (2024) deepens the symbolic and narrative dimension of her practice.
The highlight is the large-scale piece A Peaceful Scene on a Spring Day, which stretches over 2.8 meters in width. In this work, the meticulous rhythm of repetitive stitches unfolds like a scroll, drawing the viewer into a richly immersive visual experience.
Embroidery, by nature, is a labor-intensive medium. Through repetition, Yi constructs a surface where order and chaos, symbolism and play coexist. Her compositions, evocative of tarot cards or the dancheong (traditional Korean decorative painting) seen in shamanistic rituals, hint at an invisible order. Through this, embroidery becomes a contemporary expression of East Asian sensibility unique to Yi.
Her work represents a sensuous experiment that expands embroidery into the realm of painting, offering a compelling reinterpretation of the spirit and materiality of ink in a different visual language.
Drawing from symbolic imagery found in folk paintings, traditional tales, comic books, and tarot cards, Yi composes her visual narratives using industrial machine embroidery. Traditional motifs such as tigers, peaches, swallows, and snakes appear throughout her works—not as mere reproductions, but as reimagined symbols infused with contemporary sensibilities and social emotions.
Her embroidery transcends ornamentation. The tightly stitched and repeated threads, reminiscent of tattoos, become a medium through which the artist inscribes her emotions and memories. The unique texture of embroidery blurs the boundaries between figures, animals, and backgrounds, allowing reality and imagination to fluidly intermingle on the canvas.
This exhibition features seven works spanning from Yi’s early pieces to her most recent creations.
Party in the Peach Orchard stands out for its vivid colors and playful humor, while Horn and Bone (2024) deepens the symbolic and narrative dimension of her practice.
The highlight is the large-scale piece A Peaceful Scene on a Spring Day, which stretches over 2.8 meters in width. In this work, the meticulous rhythm of repetitive stitches unfolds like a scroll, drawing the viewer into a richly immersive visual experience.
Embroidery, by nature, is a labor-intensive medium. Through repetition, Yi constructs a surface where order and chaos, symbolism and play coexist. Her compositions, evocative of tarot cards or the dancheong (traditional Korean decorative painting) seen in shamanistic rituals, hint at an invisible order. Through this, embroidery becomes a contemporary expression of East Asian sensibility unique to Yi.
Her work represents a sensuous experiment that expands embroidery into the realm of painting, offering a compelling reinterpretation of the spirit and materiality of ink in a different visual language.