yearning

2022
Hand-shredded silk flowers, vinyl print, hand-blown glass, and river water
12 ft x 18 ft x 11ft
AiB Gallery, Travelers Towers, Southfield, Michigan

Held in the Travelers’ Towers Gallery, Gyun Hur’s site-specific installation yearning brings a poetic presence of river water, glass, and hand-shredded silk flowers into the space - materials extremely vulnerable in their nature.

As a continuation of Hur’s recent projects So we can be near and Enunciation of blessedness, the artist gathers Detroit River water as her material and anchor to imagine what yearning looks like. Using the exhibition space’s open windows as a mediator, the artist invites the audience to visually enter her wall and floor installation from the outside. This mirrors a gesture of reaching out to something ungraspable in the distance.

The gallery walls hold 36 hand blown glass vessels in teardrop shapes with Detroit river water evaporating and refilling over the course of the year long exhibition. The disappearance of river water echoes the inevitability of loss while also holding meaning for the regeneration of life. 

The floor vinyl print is a montage that traces Detroit’s both ecological and social histories. The artist hopes to honor Detroit’s rich landscape as the cusp of national borders and bodies of water, loosely inspired by the legacy of Grace Lee Boggs who spoke of justice and yearned for the healing of the local communities she cared for. Hand shredded-silk flowers are carefully laid on top of the image as a way of commemorating both the memories of the past and the hope that have endured in the history of Detroit.