Domestic Resurrection

Pipe Gallery is pleased to present Domestic Resurrection, a solo exhibition by Seungean Cha (b. 1974), on view from October 30 to November 28. Seungean Cha has developed a distinctive visual language that merges the formal idioms of twentieth-century abstraction with the material sensibility of textiles through the technique of weaving. Crossing the boundary between contemporary art and craft, the artist continues to expand weaving as a pictorial medium. In the warping stage, the process of aligning and organizing threads before they are set on the loom, the accidental stains and irregularities that emerge intertwine with the calculated order of woven patterns, producing distinctive pictorial strata. Through this process, Cha explores the intersection of materiality and visual texture, presenting an expanded notion of painting. Moving between the boundaries of textile and image, chance and order, the artist creates what she calls her own form of "woven canvas."

The works in this exhibition begin with fabrics inherited from the artist's mother and grandmother. Cha examines and re-weaves selected "dead fabrics" – discarded or passed-down textiles – by observing their microscopic structures and reconstructing their woven systems. Some works extend into the domain of abstract painting through the use of Jacquard weaving and digital algorithms, while worn garments and aged linen tablecloths are dismantled and reassembled into installations. Newly produced pieces also include woven works made from regenerated yarn spun out of discarded bedding collected in Jeju Island. In these processes, the temporal traces embedded in old fabrics are rewoven through the artist's hand, reviving layers of material and memory into new form.

The exhibition title Domestic Resurrection is borrowed from the Domestic Resurrection Circus organized by the experimental theater collective Bread & Puppet Theater, based in Vermont, USA. The troupe has long embodied political and social messages through the spirit of community and critique, expanding art into a field of social practice. During the summer of 1997, Cha served as an apprentice within this community, directly experiencing ways in which art could exceed institutional frameworks and merge with everyday life. Their values—peace, autonomy, self-sufficiency, and simplicity—left a deep impression on the artist and have since informed her ongoing inquiry into the relationship between art and life, material and spirituality.

In her process, Cha encounters small, worn fragments of cloth that recall the Gospel Leaflet—partial translations of the Bible printed in Korean and distributed by Western missionaries in the late nineteenth century. At a time when possessing the full scripture was impossible, these booklets served as vessels of faith and remembrance for early Korean Christians. The artist projects this spirit of devotion onto the symbolic presence of the aged fabric fragments. What was scarce became precious, and what was fragile endured through memory; these mediating materials evoke the spiritual resonance embedded within matter. This body of work also gestures toward a return to pre-industrial life, when textiles embodied the condensed time and labor of a household—mended, rewoven, and passed down through generations. By invoking this temporal and ethical dimension of labor, Cha questions humanity's desire for overproduction, consumption, and convenience. In this way, the devotional fervor of the Gospel Leaflet and the ethos of pre-industrial life converge as a sublime practice born of simplicity and frugality, where the spiritual and the material are interwoven.

Selecting among inherited fabrics, the artist observes their structures, analyzes their fibers, and re-weaves them to both recreate and rethink the order and beauty of the past. This act of re-weaving deciphers and reconstructs the "codes of memory," seeking to restore what time has left behind. For Cha, resurrection is possible only after death; the textiles used in this exhibition, no longer able to function as suits or hanbok, stand as symbols of the idea of rebirth. Through the union of weaving and painting, these once-lifeless fabrics are endowed with new vitality and meaning, inviting reflection on the temporal threshold between disappearance and return.