Stroll Garden is pleased to present Plumage, a solo exhibition featuring a new body of work by Eun-Ha Paek. Inspired by the social, cultural, spiritual and aesthetic preoccupations surrounding hair, Plumage features over twenty works including polystyrene foam sculptures, polymer clay “paintings,” and 3D printed ceramics. 

Partially animated by the artist’s affinity for poodles and their sculptural haircuts, this new series tests the delicate and complex interactions between vanity, control, kitsch, and cuteness, particularly when it comes to self-fashioning and reinventing oneself through hair. 

From the story of Samson and Delilah to the contemporary trope of getting a new haircut after a major life change, one’s hair is often equated to one’s identity. During the artist’s childhood, Paek was taught the Confucian idea of filial piety, that one should avoid cutting one’s hair as it is an extension of your parents and would be akin to damaging their flesh and bones. The weight of this symbolism led the artist to wear her hair short for a long time. 

While looking at old Korean paintings recently, the artist was struck by the women’s elaborate hairstyles that looked like they “were wearing little poodles on their heads.” The wigs, called “gache,” were intricate constructions only worn by wealthy women in the Joseon period, weighing between six to nine pounds. Paek recalls reading about a woman who broke her neck after standing up too suddenly due to the weight of her gache. 

Drawing from these visceral images and visual associations, Plumage features vibrant clay works fashioned through different techniques that investigate the dissolution of the status quo, the duality of feeling, and the weighty pressure of influences–from the societal to the ancestral. 

In the artist’s own words: “Hair bears the weight of symbolizing beauty, status, wealth or on the other side, strife. My hair went partially gray in college after a traumatic event – it seemed to happen just like in the movie Nightmare on Elm St, where the main character wakes up to find her hair had gone gray. The world was so normal, even though it could be terrible. This dissonance made me wonder if I just imagined the terrible. The gray proved to me that it wasn’t all in my head because something in the outside world had also changed. It was a strange comfort. This show is about uncomfortable happinesses and strange comforts, unbearable weights and letting go.”