Steven Cavallo & Shine Shin-Kim 

 

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Gallery d’Arte, 547 West 27th Street, Suite518, New York City is pleased to present “Darkness at the Break of Noon: Steven Cavallo and Shine Shin-Kim” This show will run from April 5-16, 2016 with an opening reception on Thursday, April 7th from 6 to 8 pm. The exhibition will also show a special performance by Jiyoon Hong along with other performers.

 

Both artists Steven Cavallo and Shine Shin-Kim have a common theme on Comfort Women. The term “comfort women” is a controversial issue that refers to approximately 200,000 women who were mustered as prostitutes by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. A lot of the young women were forced into sexual slaveries throughout Asia, becoming victims of the largest case of human trafficking in the 20th century. These two artists are making more of an effort to address that the Comfort Women issue is not an individual problem throughout the nation.

 

Steven Cavallo started research of Comfort Women in 2007 and spent his time with the victims. He portrays a series of human figures with most images which are a combination of different women models, put together in a way to show the underlying beauty of the human figure.

Steve Cavallo is a watercolorist whose work focuses on human rights, human trafficking and more specifically, forced sexual slaves of WWII known as Comfort Women.

Cavallo’s paintings consist of the human figure, most images being a combination of different models, put together in a way to show the underlying beauty of the human figure, and the grotesque images of what mankind has done. Cavallo uses the colors common to bruises in his work, and focus not on the war years when these women were forced to serve up to 50 Japanese Soldiers a day, but his work concentrates on the years that follow. The years spent in silence, the years of speaking out and the years of being outcasts of society and now, in recent months, being forsaken by their own government.  Cavallo designed and was instrumental in the placing of the first memorial dedicated to these women, which is in Palisades Park NJ.  Since the Palisades Park memorial was unveiled in 2010, 8 more memorials have been installed throughout the world, with 3 others in progress.

becoming victims of the largest case of human trafficking in the 20th century. these two artists are making more of an effort to address that the comfort women issue is not an individual problem throughout the nation.

 

 

Sine Shin-Kim is working on the One Heart Project for “Comfort Women” to connect people through the quilt making with other artistic activities; the ceremonial covering of the public symbols, the ritual includes music, dance, and other types of performances to release all people from social trauma.

The One Heart Project will present the issue of comfort women that became a serious social concern in South Korea by creating a quilt and ritual artworks. This event will allow attendants to realize and recognize the “comfort women” issue that is a Human Rights issue, as well as a women’s issue. As a social artist who is concerning about this social issue, Shine Shin-Kim would like to collect heart in the form of an artwork from people who love peace and protest Human Rights and Justice abuses, especially those against women. She will bring together their heart and minds together to create one large quilt work in the shaped of a heart to inspire further action.

 

All participants will patch quilt work patches together to create a huge quilt. Each participant will talk about “comfort women” issue, and become more aware about it and its victims. The participants will represent each their heart that love peace and empathize with victim's pain and suffering collected together into one big quilt; that is one big heart. Following the creation of a quilt, an interactive ritual performance will be presented including a ritual event with music and dance pieces that utilize the patched quilt. This performance’s purpose is to release and liberate the pain, especially social pain and make healing experience together. Finally, people will be able to see a completed installation artwork where the large quilt covers some social symbol or place.

 

Shine Shin-Kim is a New York-based Fine artist, painter, writer. She came to New York in 2011 and created her own interactive social healing art project, One Heart Project in 2013 that emphasized the connection between people. Her artwork is an ongoing project and she continues to develop it in different ways to approach diverse groups of people to let them communicate and connect their hearts and minds. Ms. Shin-Kim graduated from Chonnam National University while majoring in Art Education in Korea in 1994. While teaching drawing and painting, she realized the power of influence and how people communicate and connect their minds through the arts. She is also much interested in how arts can be a powerful method for social change. Ms. Shin-Kim has also participated in several experimental projects (such as Social engaged Art Movement for democracy in Gwangju, Korea) in order to be engaged with social issues that use art to examine the influence of art on society.