Toilet Project

Home, Press

The ‘Toilet Project’ is running across the UK and is the work of Korean artist Meekyoung Shin.

Visitors to the Holburne can enjoy a soapy sculpture when they visit the loo.

Soap Sculpture

• Meekyoung Shin (b. 1967 in South Korea) lives and works in Seoul and London. She completed her BFA and MFA in Seoul National University and moved to London in 1995 to obtain her MFA at Slade School of Art. Meekyoung Shin has exhibited internationally and is renowned for recreating replica versions of antiquities in household soap. Initially trained in Korea in a classical tradition of European sculpture, Shin subsequently moved to London where she became drawn to the many objects removed from their place of origin and placed in vitrines and on plinths in museums and other art institutions to act as representatives of other cultures. She began to make copies of the artifacts in soap, an everyday material that has a close resemblance to marble when moulded but disintegrates as it weathers rapidly, mirroring the effects over generations of time on the original and ancient sculptures created in seemingly more durable materials. The soap is formulated from a palm-free soap base and is 100% vegetarian.

 

Published on: 24/07/2013

The Holburne Museum