KOREA FOUNDATION

Suppose the earth is a perfect sphere. Argentina is located on the complete opposite side to Korea. Buenos Aires, the capital city of the faraway country, boasts a harmony of time-honored European-style architecture, tall, lustrous trees in downtown areas, and garment shops operated by Korean immigrants clustered in the outskirts of Avellaneda. Here in Avellaneda are over a thousand stores, many of them selling clothes, and nearly half of them are directly or indirectly run by Koreans; in this Korea town is a very special museum.

   It is Museo Kim Yun Shin, opened in 2008 as the first and only museum established by a Korean-Argentine. Kim Yun-shin studied fine arts in Korea and France and enjoyed a stable career before she became enamored of the beautiful nature of Argentina during a tour of South America. Intrigued by the local forests perfect for sculpting, she began a new life as an artist in the country. In 1984, she found a house on the outskirts of Buenos Aires and consulted the Korean Embassy about holding an exhibit there. Twenty-five years after her settlement she opened her private museum, and her works began to captivate the Argentine public.

   One of the distinctive features of the museum is that the works on display are replaced every two years. Kim believes trees have lives, bones, and blood vessels, and she fashions her pieces from indigenous South American trees. She even presented new works during the biennial Day of Museums in Buenos Aires. Kim says she couldn’t return to Korea after her first show in Argentina earned such praise and she was inundated with calls for exhibitions from around the country.

   While Kim creates works by instilling her own artistic spirit into South American nature, her museum enjoys great popularity as a venue for field trips not only among Korean-Argentine children but also among local students. The role of the museum has thus expanded into an establishment where arts, culture, and education come together in synergy. In 2017, the museum offered cultural programs that went beyond fine art by staging a performance by a traditional Korean percussion ensemble (samulnori) and screening a video introducing the Korean island of Dokdo during the Day of Korean Culture in Argentina.

   Kim Yun-shin is an artist whose career has continued to grow skyward, much in the manner of the trees of her faraway Argentine home, a country not yet familiar to much of the Korean public. But as unfamiliarity gradually turns to fraternity, the artist and her eponymous museum are expected to take the two countries’ relationship to new heights, twin shoots springing forth from the fertile South American soil.

Written by Kim Shinyoung

Argentina Gallery Korean Arts