Innovative photographic works that open up new paths for the genre | Ilwoo Photography Award 2012

Yoon Ji Seon (*1975 in Seoul) avails herself of an array of techniques in her works while questioning the viewer’s fundamental visual habits. In her latest series, Rags Face, for instance, she adds sewing to her self-portraits, distorting her own face with rhythmic quilting stitches whose lines deliberately recall painting. Yoon Ji Seon suspends some of her works in the exhibition space so that the front and back form a pair. She occasionally integrates traditional, handmade paper that dissolves as soon as it comes into contact with water, making it possible to see the connecting threads and the holes made by sewing needles that originally held the piece together. With her faces furrowed in this manner, reminiscent of archaic masks, the artist deconstructs the human appearance and creates chimeras—some humorous, some nightmarish—that gaze steadfastly at the viewer.