The theme is ‘Put yourself into this shoe!’,2017.
In a world where empathy seems to be lacking, we can easily encounter loss of humanity. My aim is that the artefacts produced to encourage the viewer to put themselves into these shoes. Each shoes pose some posture which imply some emotions based on the body(foot) language in the social psychological approach.
I am trying to evoke an empathetic reaction in the viewer. The absent body is explored as a de-familiarisation technique to arrest the gaze of the viewer. The artefacts invite the viewer to ‘step into’ the experience, after closer inspection the artefacts turn out to be handcrafted, and through this display traces of the maker emphasising a human approach. It is in this way that the viewer is challenged to engage in an empathetic dialogue with the objects. Hence, the viewer can imagine themselves in somebody else’s shoes and somebody else’s emotions.
Materials: Veg tan leather, Epoxy resin, lime wood and nylon thread.
© Kim Hyeyoung, photo by Minjoo Chae
