The themes that Mimi has set, however, of her migration from Korea at eight years of age and the difficulty of assimilation are so close to the Broached agenda of tracing globalisation through material culture. The creative dialogue started synergistically and continued that way into the production phase of the collection.
Mimi’s weaving practice is one of solitary, cathartic and meditative repetition. Every aspect of ideation through to production and communication of the work is managed, successfully, by Mimi. Statistically, economic sovereignty is prized by migrants of all backgrounds. They are twice as likely to pursue entrepreneurial careers than their natively born counterparts in America or Australia. Accomplishing entrepreneurialism whilst protecting a highly sensitive creative vision is a double achievement.
The role of the artist is to find a form that tells the story of these historical currents, of which their life forms one solitary unit. Jung’s weaving practice could be seen as blending the modernist grid with the voids of inter-cultural misalignment, of the kinds so beautifully rendered in Nabokov’s Ada & Ardoror or in the films by David Lynch where genre forms are stretched to such an extent that holes appear in the fabric of the narrative that mirror the schisms in the protagonists life.
The dialogue for developing this collection oscillated between the personal and broadly historical. It began with a conversation about Mimi’s experiences of Korea as a child and the circumstances that led her mother to migrate to America.
As is often the case with a creative process that is biographical in nature, Mimi’s design development started with delving into early work to see if there were elements that still resonated and could be evolved. Then an opportunity to work within the local community presented itself. Judson Glass – who have established a new facility focused on moving the capability of the famed century old flat glass workshop into three dimensional, sculptural works – approached Mimi with idea of collaborating, and with this the material direction of the collection was set.
In Mimi’s woven works each thread of mohair projects its lashes out in a unique way. The lines are straight, but the short fibers of the material are defined by a gentle, static shock. To translate this to glass Mimi created a series of ubiquitous dimensioned strips each with unique undulations. These were then stacked and fused. The voids within the glass represent the points where the heterogeneity of the elements are stretched beyond reckoning.
Most Broached Commissions collections take two years to realize. Within eighteen months Mimi Jung adjusted her singular practice to a collaborative one, developing a beautiful way to express her aesthetic in glass. Broached has rarely worked with a designer as deft and dexterous.
Broached Exceptions, designed by Mimi Jung was presented in a discrete space as part of a wider survey show of Broached Commissions work at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2018; the first presentation of a Mimi Jung collection in Australia.