Facilitated by Claire Kim, Manager of Programs and Collections, Asia Art Archive in America (AAAA)

How do artists navigate the tensions between individual expression and collective responsibility? How do acts of monumentality—whether in scale, memory, or intention—shape our understanding of community and agency?

Artists Gyun Hur and Jean Shin come together in a profound conversation on the role of public art, materiality, and cultural memory in fostering solidarity. Through their practices, they engage with themes of transformation, labor, and the reimagination of shared spaces. Whether through the ephemeral beauty of Hur’s installations or the large-scale, socially engaged works of Shin, both artists challenge the ways in which we see, remember, and participate in the world around us.

Guided by Claire Kim, this discussion will explore how art can serve as both a monument to lived experiences and a catalyst for collective action. By centering community narratives and histories, Hur and Shin reveal how creative interventions can empower individuals, reclaim spaces, and forge new solidarities.

Join us for a compelling dialogue on art’s capacity to build bridges, honor histories, and redefine agency in our ever-evolving cultural landscape.

About the speakers

Jean Shin is known for her sprawling and often public sculptures, transforming accumulations of discarded objects into powerful monuments that interrogate our complex relationship between material consumption, collective identity, and community engagement. Often working cooperatively within a community, Shin amasses vast collections of everyday objects—Mountain Dew bottles, mobile phones, 35mm slides—while researching their history of use, circulation, and environmental impact. Distinguished by this labor-intensive and participatory process, Shin’s creations become catalysts for communities to confront social and ecological challenges.

Born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised in the U.S., Shin works in Brooklyn and Hudson Valley, New York. Her work has been widely exhibited and collected in over 150 major museums and cultural institutions, including solo exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC, and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, where in 2020 she was the first Korean-American woman artist featured in a solo exhibition. Shin has received numerous awards, including the Frederic Church Award for her contributions to American art and culture. Her works have been highlighted in The New York Times and Sculpture Magazine, among others.

Her body of work includes several permanent public artworks commissioned by major agencies and municipalities, most recently a landmark commission for the MTA’s Second Ave Subway in NYC. She is a tenured Adjunct Professor at Pratt Institute and holds an honorary doctorate from the New York Academy of Art.

Claire Kim is a curator and writer based in New York City. She is currently the Manager of Programs and Collections at Asia Art Archive in America. She also serves as the Director of Curatorial Affairs at The Here and There Collective. Kim was previously the Special Assistant to the President at BRIC, in Brooklyn, as well as a 2020–21 curatorial fellow at NXTHVN, in New Haven, CT. She has worked in museum education and programming with arts organizations, including the Asian American Arts Alliance, New Museum, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She has organized exhibitions at James Cohan Gallery, New York; Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard; Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York; Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art, Brooklyn; and BRIC, Brooklyn. Kim completed her MA at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.

Gyun Hur is an interdisciplinary artist and an educator whose biographical context as a first generation immigrant growing up in the American South largely informs her practice and pedagogical approach.

Gyun completed Art Farm Serenbe Residency, Stove Works Residency, NARS Foundation Residency, Bronx Museum AIM Fellowship, Pratt Fine Arts Residency, BRICworkspace, Danspace Project Platform Writer-in-Residency,  Ox-Bow Artist-in-Residency, Vermont Studio Center, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is the recipient of Artadia, AHL Foundation Artist Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, Faculty Research Funds (Parsons School of Design), and the inaugural Hudgens Prize. Her works have been featured in Hyperallergic, The Cut, Art In America, Art Paper, Sculpture, Art Asia Pacific, Public Art Magazine Korea, Hong Kong Economic Journal, Yahoo! Tech, Huffington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Pelican Bomb, Creative Loafing, Jezebel, and The Atlantan. Her interest in art making in public space led her to various artist presentations at the TEDxCentennialWomen, the international street art conference Living Walls: The City Speaks, the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, The New School, and many others. Gyun has contributed as an artist-writer in fLoromancy, The Brooklyn Rail, and The Forgetory.

Born in South Korea, she moved to Georgia at the age of 13. She currently lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Parsons School of Design, The New School as an Assistant Professor of Fine Arts.

Photos by Daniel Terna (Shin) and Mackenna Lewis (Hur)