4/8/2024: An Interview With Lina Sun Park
“I’ve always been drawn to small and dainty, little things I can stage on a shelf, or put in my pocket, or take somewhere with me. They seem like little artifacts from a special, secret world.”
Hello hello,
Today marks the dawning of a new era for Quinn’s Newsletter as we (“we”) kick off a biweekly interview series.
One of the first names that came to mind when I was imagining this feature was Lina Sun Park. Lina is a New York City-based visual artist whose work is a doorway into her mischievous imagination. Using miniature furniture, food, and bows, Lina creates unexpectedly delightful pairings—it turns out that a baguette woven with red ribbon possesses a seductive romance reminiscent of The Red Shoes. Many of these images can be found in her first solo art book, last year’s A Mouse in Her House, as well as in 2021’s A Spell Too Far, a collaboration with her partner, the photographer David Brandon Geeting.
Lina’s work has long incorporated ribbons—a few summers ago she delicately placed a bow atop my rabbit for a portrait—but last year a series of her woven “bread studies” became associated with the viral “coquette” aesthetic. Bows became the subject of think pieces debating whether a collective yearning for girlhood was a reclamation or regression and every brand hopped on the bandwagon, turning a accessory that costs less than a dollar a yard into a flourish worthy of a price markup. Bows were more inescapable than usual during the holidays and are still going strong as a trend—seemingly every girl had a bow pinned to her ponytail at a recent Olivia Rodrigo concert.
As someone who has worn ribbons in her hair for years, I’ve found the whole moment very bizarre. I suppose my style generally leans towards the feminine but bows have always felt like armor, not a means of getting in touch with my former child or something. With all this in mind, I was curious to speak to Lina about the origins of her artistry, A Mouse in Her House, and those pesky ribbons we love so much.
Since much of your work is informed by a sense of childlike play, I was curious what you were like as a kid.
I was quite shy as a kid, and I still very much am a shy person. My parents worked a lot, and would drop my sister and I off at the library often. We’d spend the whole day there, eat lunch outside in the grass, and get picked up at night. We’d read all sorts of illustrated children’s stories, teen magazines, comic books, and check out random CDs. That was a very formative time for me, and since I was shy I had a lot of materials from that to fill my imagination.
When did you first realize that you were creative?
I started taking art classes at a young age and have always enjoyed art making, and using my imagination to have fun. My interest in art was building over time and it was an exciting moment when I got older, and realized it can be a career path.
You grew up in California and your parents ran Japanese sushi restaurants. How did that upbringing inform your food-based tableaux?
I would spend much of my time in the restaurant, leafing through these shiny, large paged books or calendars of beautifully plated sushi with elaborate, decorative garnishes and unusual color and texture pairings. That really informed my young and current mind in so many ways, especially in terms of the presentation of food and the different forms it can take. My sister and I would always help my mom make food as children too, things like making dumplings from scratch. We would fold the dumpling wrappers into funny shapes and laugh at how they emerged looking once cooked. Creating with food has been a natural progression from so many elements of my childhood. This type of thinking also lends itself to using other materials that are not traditional mediums as well.
Much of your work is ephemeral by nature—cheese gets rotten, pastries go stale, apples turn brown. What role does documentation play and has that changed since you have been in a relationship with a photographer?
I’ve never been a good documenter of my work, in the proper sense. I would take a lot of iPhone photos or fuzzy, blown out polaroids of my work. I sometimes consider my work involving ephemeral mediums as installations that have been documented. My partner Dave definitely encourages me to properly document my pieces, and has been a very positive influence on me in that area.
It also feels notable that your chosen materials are often quite small in scale. What draws you to the miniature?
I’ve always been drawn to small and dainty, little things I can stage on a shelf, or put in my pocket, or take somewhere with me. They seem like little artifacts from a special, secret world.
Last year you released your first solo art book, A Mouse in Her House. It features a wide variety of your work, including digital collages, sculptural arrangements, and spontaneous iPhone snapshots. How did you go about putting it together?
It was really a puzzle process of seeing my new body of work next to what already existed from years prior, and figure out which ones seemed to be having the most interesting visual conversations with each other. So much of my work and inspiration comes from small moments captured simply on my phone, and I’ve always loved collages and scrapbooks. It felt most genuine and authentic to present my work in this way.
Also last year, your work became associated with the trendy coquette aesthetic that was tied to a larger social dialogue about girlhood. Even the Kardashians’ vitamin brand directly ripped you off in a since-deleted ad. What has been surprising to you about the ways people interpret your work?
It’s unexpected to be able to make work and have it speak to a large group of people, in a way I could have never foreseen. The timing is interesting too, and I do wonder what it would’ve been like to put this work out when the concept of coquette was not trending. On girlhood, I think it is incredible that people are feeling confident to be unabashedly feminine, especially as it can be seen as taboo. However I do think there’s also a lot of regality in a ribbon, and a lot of mystery, which does not seem to be as emphasized within the whole bow conversation. It seems the press only want to infantilize everything. Many brands or stores will post my work, usually without asking, to publicize a sale or promote a “mood,” when my work makes no sense, in my opinion, with their brand or what they are selling. It seems brands are using anything with a bow on it to latch onto a trend, while divorcing the image from any meaning.
Many people who have been drawn to the bow trend have said that it evokes a sense of nostalgia for girlhood. Is that something you can relate to? Or does your use of ribbons speak more to who you are now as an adult?
Sometimes I think when you become an adult, a lot of the widely accepted clothes and houseware options can become generally boring, homogenous, and not fun. I mean, I love old, antique things, which don’t look childish, but I also love little fun flourishes of bows and flowers. I think there’s no reason to deny myself or my work of things that make me happy. I also don’t think bows and ribbons have to be reserved for children. Bows used to be gender-specific to aristocratic men, and used as a status symbol, worn in their hair. I’m not sure when they became heavily associated with children, but I think anyone who is scared of bows for that reason really needs to watch some period movies and see how beautifully bows are used to command the room within the wardrobe realm or otherwise. I love when I see an older woman, especially one with grey hair, wearing a ribbon in her hair or clothes.
What do bows represent to you?
The bow is such a universal, recognizable symbol, that its presence can go from feeling elegant, to childish, to theatrical or even old fashioned, depending on how it’s presented. Bows are shape shifters in that way. I think when presented just right, a bow can hold a lot of power. They also symbolize romance and elegance—they’re very mysterious actually. The bow seems like this ancient knot, perhaps even one of the very first knots to have ever existed.