Min Haeng Kang

By using devitrification, which crystallizes the surface and induces opaqueness at a certain temperature, Min has come to newly perceive glass as living, organic matter, like trees, soil, and grass. Making a work for her is a process of understanding her own thoughts and emotions and thereby expanding understanding of human existence. She attempted “work that embodies emotions as another living organism by separating emotions from the rational self, which thinks emotions as its own when having feeling beyond the control of reason” and used glass to express a living organic image. She began to aim at extending the scope of understanding of herself as a social being, contemplating the artist’s role in society and what meaning her own works and creative activities can have socially, and expressing these through her works.

Min was born in Korea and majored in Korean Literature and Photography in Korea and started studying glass in Japan. She graduated as an honor student at Toyama City Institute of Glass Art in Japan. She created her work at the Utatsuyama craft workshop in Japan for three years with scholarship and awarded an honor researcher prize twice. She is the first person to receive the grand prize as a foreigner at the 69^th annual Kanazawa Craft competition held in Kanazawa, a well-known ‘craft city’ in Japan and the first Korean to receive the grand prize at the Triennial International Exhibition of Glass Kanazawa competition in Japan. She also received a silver prize and special prize at the Cheongju International Craft Biennale competition in Korea. Her work was invited to the exhibition “COLOURS” at Hempel Glasmuseum in Denmark. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Cheongju International Biennale Committee, the Toyama Glass Art Museum, the Notojima Glass Art Museum, the Utatsuyama Craft Workshop and Toyama City Institute of Glass Art. Her work can be found in catalogs that were produced for several of the exhibition mentioned above as well as in New Glass Review 34.