Dislocation: Evelyn Rydz & Do Ho Suh

These two artists explore the effects of global movement and relocation.

Detail from Drifting Islands #3,  pencil, colored pencil, and acrylic on 2 sheets of Duralar, 21 x 32 in, 2009

084523, pencil and colored pencil on Duralar, 11 x 14 in, 2010

Evelyn Rydz was a finalist in the 2010 James and Aubrey Foster Prize, which is a biennial award and exhibition program sponsored by the ICA and given to a selection of Boston-area artists. She received her BFA from Florida State University and MFA. from SMFA. Evelyn teaches in the Studio Foundation Department at MassArt and has been involved with community art projects at the ICA and MFA. The two images above were featured in an interview with Evelyn that can be seen on New American Painting's blog.

In her extremely detailed drawings, Evelyn documents objects that have been washed ashore onto shorelines around the world, from Lima and Miami to Rio De Janeiro and Boston. She is interested in "the stories they tell of relocation, transformation, and all the events that might have made them castaways in these foreign landscapes" (New American Painting). Evelyn relates this idea of dislocation to her personal history: the past three generations of her family have come from different countries.  The found objects are metaphors for how people adapt, move, and relocate and how they collect experiences and memories as they move to new places.

Bridging Home, mixed media outdoor installation, 2010
Commissioned for 2010 Liverpool Biennial  

Part Two:Reflection, nylon and stainless steel tube, dimensions variable, 2004.
Displayed at Lehmann Maupin Gallery in NY

Art 21 artist Do Ho Suh received his BFA and MFA from Seoul National University and has studied at RISD and Yale. He has exhibited at Seattle Art Museum, the Whitney Museum, the Serpentine Gallery (London), and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas City).

Like Evelyn Rydz, Do Ho works with the ideas of dislocation, adaptation, and assimilation. He was born in South Korea, moved to the US for school, and currently divides his times between the two countries. His work comes from the tension of not feeling a true sense of belonging to either country. Earlier in his career, Do Ho created portable life-size models of his various homes, including his childhood home in Korea. The fabric tent-like structures can folded and carried around. As a result, Do Ho is never separated from the memories and culture of one part of his divided existence. Currently, he is creating installations in which houses are surreally dropped into locations that they do not belong, in a very Wizard of Oz-y type of way (like in the first image). Do Ho uses representations of Korean houses as a symbol of his cultural heritage then places the houses internationally.