Western art professor examines death in new exhibition

Camille Lenning |  Entertainment Editor

All artists deserve a place to showcase their work, and Western art and design adjunct professor Sung Eun Park has found one in the Well Well Projects gallery in Portland. 

Well Well Projects was founded by artists in January 2021 with the goal of giving local artists an exhibition space they can control. All 12 members pay a small fee to use the gallery, which resides in the Oregon Contemporary — a popular art center in Portland’s Kenton neighborhood. 

Park’s exhibition, “The Inevitable Shadow,” is shared with artists Alyson Provax and Kelda Van Patten, and examines nostalgia, longing and death, with a focus on how the pandemic has affected these themes. 

Park works primarily through sculpture and mixed media art, and her piece in the gallery, called “Dressing Room,” is part of a bigger series she has been working on over the last year. 

“The ongoing series that I’ve been working on is an investigation into ‘good death,’ a reflection of mortality — the inevitable shadow that forces us to accept the prospect of death,” Park said of the series, “(life and death) is kind of like a coin, and a coin has two sides.”

The inspiration for “Dressing Room” came from the Netflix docuseries “The Casketeers,” which follows the daily lives of Māori funeral directors in New Zealand. In this funeral home, there’s a room called the dressing room, where bodies are clothed for funeral services. 

This final moment between death and burial intrigued Park, and she began to wonder about the different connotations to the act of “dressing.” Doctors dress wounds to heal them, we dress ourselves before we begin our day — Park examines the similarities between these actions and how people prepare for the inescapable end. 

“When the body passes through the dressing room, it heals all the wounds it suffered during the life journey,” Park writes in her artist’s statement. “Before the body disappears, it puts on new clothes and, once again, starts a new journey.” 

“The Inevitable Shadow” will be open for viewing on Saturdays and Sundays between noon and 5 p.m. until Feb. 27. Find the Well Well Projects gallery at 8371 N Interstate Ave. #1.

Contact the author at howlentertainment@wou.edu