A buzz of creativity filled Saint Xavier University on Wednesday, Oct. 22, as Chicago artist Diana Noh welcomed guests to the artist reception for her exhibit Refractured: Threads of Awakening, The Self. The event invited visitors to step inside a world of color, texture and emotion, where stitches told stories and photographs seemed to breathe with memory.
The reception celebrated Noh’s deeply personal body of work, which uses torn, burned, stitched and layered photographs to reflect her process of healing and self-reconstruction.
“The term ‘refractured’ is actually borrowed from medicine,” Noh explained. “It describes a bone that has healed incorrectly and must be carefully re-broken to realign properly. That’s how I view my emotional process, mending the parts of myself that needed realignment.”
Born in the United States and raised in South Korea, Noh’s art reflects the complexities of growing up between two cultures. “Art has always been my primary way of communicating,” she said. “Words can sometimes feel limiting, but art allows for greater depth and interpretation.”
In her artist statement, Noh described how she reconstructs distressed photographs of abandoned spaces and landscapes to explore the trauma of living between cultural identities. “I identify with buildings that are hidden but accessible; they stand in for my body and neglected feelings,” she wrote. “Born American and raised in a Korean household, the emotional burden of being raised between two different cultures has left me angry, resentful, guilty and confused. I seek to understand my internal fracture through a process of destroying and rebuilding large-scale photographs.”
By physically breaking down and reassembling her imagery through tearing, burning, stitching, sewing, restoring and breaking, Noh visualizes recovery as an ongoing process. She constructs her pieces using canvas paper that balances between two and three dimensions, employing various stitching methods to reflect tension, chance and control.
“Hand-stitching allows me to make intricate but slow stitches; machine-sewing allows me to utilize time but encroaches my authority,” she said. “I build new layers of skin above my scars. They become my own space to rest, the only space which allows me to intentionally sink into selfishness.”
Noh studied Photography and Motion Picture at Kyungil University in South Korea, but her creative path evolved far beyond the lens. Sewing and textile work became central to her art as she searched for ways to make photography more personal and expressive.
“During college, I struggled with the idea of authorship in photography,” she said. “I wondered what made an image truly mine if anyone could take the same photo. Sewing became my answer. Even when I make editions of a piece, each stitch is unique, just like each emotion.”
