Steps

A pair of old shoes has been disassembled, their two toe tips extending in opposite directions. The rough and worn nature of its parts are in tension with their delicate placement on the paper. Stripped and laid out to reveal the full skeleton of its combined parts, the shoe seems almost vulnerable.

Jean Shin is a Korean American artist who currently lives in New York. Her work uses everyday objects such as old shoes, pill bottles, or sweaters, giving them new meaning. Shin turns what was once discarded into something momentous, making the viewer think about what society considers waste. When collecting such objects, Shin asks for donations in specific communities, so her work often reflects the history and identities of these communities. For Steps,/i>, Shin writes, “the specific materials used—the innermost leather and cloth linings—are those that lay closest to the body.” What was once intimately known to us, enclosing our feet, is now disregarded because it is too worn to fulfill its purpose.