Two months ago, I attended an art fair in Brooklyn and to be honest, I left feeling anxious after a couple of laps around the venue. Perhaps, it's the state of the world but the usual bold, bright, paintings that typically draw my attention made my entire being tense and uneasy.
These past few months, I've been purging and seeking anything calm and serene, so I was delighted to stumble upon Yoona Hur's work earlier this summer—her Instagram page is just delightful to scroll through amidst a doomscroll.
Yoona was born and raised in Seoul, Korea until the age of twelve, when she moved to NYC. A painter and ceramicist, Yoona explores traditional Korean art, architecture, monochrome, Buddhism, and Hinduism through her work. I personally fell in love with all her moon jar pieces, her way of reconnecting with her Korean heritage. The colors and shapes, all very grounding. Just look at that terracotta-colored piece!
Moon jar is a traditional Korean white porcelain which was uniquely made during the Joseon dynasty (1392–1910), never having been produced in China or Japan. Adopted as imperial ware in the fifteenth century, moon jars remained popular until the mid-eighteenth century and were not nicknamed moon jars until the 1950s—the nickname a nod to its shape and milky color of the glaze to resemble the coloration of the moon.
