Dreamtime IV by So Yoon Lym: A New Exhibition at Brooklyn Public Library

Dreamtime IV by So Yoon Lym  is a series of acrylic on paper paintings, represented as archival pigment prints documenting hair and braid patterns based on actual hairstyles worn by students whom this artist knew while a full-time art educator during the years 2001-2009 in Paterson, NJ.

In the age of GPS cell phones tracking movement and satellite surveillance with biometric scanning recognition, the modern day aboriginal wears his location like an image-text on his head. Accordingly, Dreamtime is inspired by the Aboriginal stories and visions of creation. Hair braiders and the subjects of So Yoon Lym’s works are the weavers of patterns, who recover the mythical past of the natural world and its creation through the transmission of age old signs and images. Each braided pattern, carried by the students, is a map of the ancient universe, a topographical palimpsest of the world in pattern: valleys, mountains, forests, oceans, rivers, streams. The painter and the hair-braider lay down their marks like their predecessor creator beings, carving and inscribing, creating and being, in turn, created by their labor. According to Lym, braid patterns are the language for the new aboriginal, the transplanted and de-territorialized nomad. The braid patterns both record journeys to the present and re-present cartographical longings; they are a stamp of entry into a brave new world order while simultaneously remembering prehistory.

So Yoon Lym was born in Seoul, Korea, but spent the first seven years of her life in East Africa. Lym received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Rhode Island School of Design and her Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University in New York City. She’s worked as an arts educator in the Paterson Public Schools since 2001 and has had her work shown throughout Brooklyn and New York City, as well as Virginia, New Jersey, Ohio, Texas, California, Massachusetts, Indiana, Cuba, Australia, Djibouti, and Korea, among other places.

Join us for So Yoon Lym’s exhibition, on display now through May 3^rd at Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Branch in Grand Army Plaza.

For more information please visit: http://www.bklynpubliclibrary.org/events/exhibitions/dreamtime-vi-so-yoon-lym

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