Mat 120 × 165 #19-01,

2019

In this triptych Kang juxtaposes industrial mass production and traditional handicraft, combining metal grids and handwoven mats made from multicolored sedge by Korean craftswomen. The interplay between materials creates a visual oscillation, eliciting a sense of movement that links the work to Kang’s performances, in which dancers move within space, framed by reed mats and metal structures. Kang’s reed mat “paintings” are inspired by the Chunaengmu (Dance of the Spring Oriole), an early nineteenth-century Korean courtly dance performed by women within the confines delineated by the weave of a hwamunseok reed mat. The dance’s elements were transcribed using jeongganbo musical notation, in which tone, duration, lyrics, and gesture can all be represented within a single square of a grid, called a jeong, derived from the Mandarin character 井, for “well.”