Meekyoung Shin

Meekyoung Shin (b. 1967) is a South Korean sculptor who specializes in soap carving to create statues and other objects in Greco-Roman, Korean, and Chinese styles.

Early life and education
Born in Cheongju, South Korea in 1967, Shin completed her BFA and MFA at Seoul National University, then moved to London to do her MFA at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1995. She completed her MFA in the ceramics and glass program at the Royal College of Art.

Style
The size of her work ranges from handheld size to towering sculptures, with one of her sculptures utilizing 50,000 bars of soap. Her methods include using plaster to cast elements, and then sculpting with replications of Greco-Roman sculpture styles, Chinese ceramic styles, or Korean ceramic styles. The use of scented soap is significant in her work as an added sensory experience in her exhibitions. In her exhibitions for Toilet Bodhisattva, she cast small versions of a Buddha statue so that the viewer may experience the same material used in the exhibition. For other Toilet Project works, she created statues of classical busts. Shin has cast parts of herself to make sculptures, such as in her work Crouching Aphrodite.

Work
The material she uses is meant to call into question the nature of stability and the meaning in cultural contexts. The use of soap is meant to explore translation across cultures and the passage of time. She changed the features to evoke Asian features on her 2002 statue Crouching Aphrodite to challenge classical standards of beauty. Her work is also sometimes painted, or formed with pieces missing to better evoke the cultures that the inspiration derives from. She additionally uses materials such as fragrance, pigments, varnish, gold leaf, resin, and acrlyic in her work.

A statue of Prince William, Duke of Cumberland was removed in 1868, then replicated by Shin in soap (initially in clay); the replication was installed on the same plinth in 2012 at Cavendish Square, and left exposed to the elements for over a year in the London rain until its removal in 2016. The statue, called Written in Soap: A Plinth Project, was meant to be there for a year, and the dissolution of the material is meant to refer to changing meaning of statues and changing perceptions of history. The soap was scented, vegetable-based, and had a skeletal support attached to the base holding the sculpture upright. This work has been cited in investigations into colonial legacy in public spaces.

Her work has been exhibited at Princessehof Ceramics Museum, the National Centre for Craft & Design, Kukje Gallery, Art Basel, the Arko Art Center in Seoul, the Barakat Gallery, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, CR Collective in west Seoul, the Saatchi Gallery, the Wooyang Museum of Contemporary Art, the Mongin Art Center, and Haunch of Venison. Other versions of Written in Soap: A Plinth Project were also installed at the National Museum of Contemporary Art and at the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei.

Series and projects

 * Toilet Project
 * Translation – Ghost Series
 * Translation – Glass Bottle Series
 * Translation – Painting Series
 * Translation – Vase Series
 * Weathering Project