Uncovered Connections with Bria Sterling and Jean Jinho Kim
One of my favorite things about art...
A few weeks ago, while visiting exhibitions between Baltimore and D.C., I was taken with two very different works of art. As I cataloged each in my mind, they began to whisper. Despite their distinctive styles and varied contexts, Bria Sterling’s Shining (2024) and Jean Jinho Kim’s Magic Boots (2024) created a dynamic dialogue about family, womanhood, and self-determination that stood out amongst everything I’d seen.
Sterling’s Shining, rethinks desirability by juxtaposing her grandmother’s belongings with a play of words. Encrusted with shards of glass and filled with nylon stockings, prosthetic legs glisten as they dangle from an ornate light fixture. The readymade is joined by an excerpt from Elizabeth Winship’s advice column that offers guidance to young ladies navigating the perils of “amputee fetishism.” It warns of extreme arousal and cautions readers to be wary of people’s intentions. In this clever pairing, Sterling makes visible the presumed undesirable, places it on a pedestal and asserts her grandmother’s glory. Shining becomes the centerpiece of an exhibition that explores Joan Poncella’s (Sterling’s grandmother) interior world while chronicling her lawsuit against the Maryland Transit Authority for discrimination.
Kim’s Magic Boots are constructed with powdered aluminum and composed of geometric shapes to resemble women’s shoes. They embody the tenacity of her mother who wore boots faithfully despite injury or old age. Structured yet stylish, Magic Boots is imbued with a whimsicality that commands attention. The eye is lured down a bright red length that ends with a pointed toe punctuated by a slight heel. Until recently, Kim maintained a practice that rebuked society’s expectations of women by creating with hard industrial materials. This work marks a turning point in her career where the earlier tension is replaced by the acceptance of womanhood’s multiplicity. Magic Boots is one of many artworks created for the series Filling her Shoes, in which metal replicates objects associated with femininity and becomes armor for navigating life.
These works seem to anticipate one another. Kim describes Magic Boots as a symbol for “life’s obstacles and choices,” Shining accomplishes a similar end as the prosthetic legs represent a barrier Sterling’s grandmother had to overcome. Both works are steeped in the concept of movement as perseverance. Kim contemplates this in a general sense as she addresses philosophical tensions of womanhood while Sterling considers the space between mobility and assumed quality of life through a specific experience. The superficial protects an inner substance in each case. As expressions of the matriarchy, these works are the stories and lessons passed down from one generation to the next.
Featured in separate exhibitions roughly 40 miles apart, these sculptures may have never come into conversation. A musing of sorts, this post is meant to plant a seed rather than prove any point. I love finding similarity through difference and uncovering connective tissue where there is seemingly none. It’s one of my favorite things about art because it translates so easily into our lives, adding texture to the day and challenging us to look at everything more closely.