Aimee Lee

Since childhood, I have made paper objects. When I learned to make paper in graduate school, I felt its pull immediately and spent as much time as I could in the paper studio. Soon after, I became intently curious about papermaking history and practices in Korea, the country of my ancestors. My yearlong fieldwork there led to more clarity as I embraced hanji, handmade Korean paper, as a material to root my life’s work. Hanji has existed for almost two millennia and functioned in many forms, from papering the floors, doors, and windows of architectural spaces, to storing tea, water, and wine in teapots and gourds, to capturing those spent beverages in chamber pots. The stories behind the uses of hanji are as myriad as other materials, and many remain untold. To hear these forgotten tales and revisit history, I make these objects anew.

My hands have made and worked hanji for a dozen years: twisting, plying, twining, dyeing, crumpling, smoothing, and sculpting paper into objects that refer to artifacts from a Korea that no longer exists. What still remains is a clear delineation of outside and inside spaces: what you look like and how you behave are very different whether you are in or out. Prior to industrialization and mass production of disposable objects, we made everything we needed: straw for outdoor tools and paper for indoor ones. Thus paper became a partner to our most practical and intimate indoor needs. While my pieces know their ancestors—a shoe, a teapot, a wedding duck, a dustpan—they are also objects that I want to see alive in the world today. These pieces remind us of this moment and the stories that our descendants will tell about us.