Die Schamanin (The Female Shaman), the artist’s second work made with handmade crocheted felt, pays homage to both the German artist Joseph Beuys and the Korean artist Paik Nam June who met in 1961. Beuys and Paik became close friends and collaborators, both of their works referring very strongly to Shamanistic influences. RHEE considers her soft sculpture a spiritual, cultural artifact that ponders the cosmos, while confronting two different kinds of cultural appropriation that are entangled with modern German history, namely the swastika and the Nebra Sky Disk, which are crocheted and sewn on each side of the drum heads. Both of these ancient symbols are considered to have religious origins linked to the movement of the sun. In 1920 Hitler appropriated the swastika, which appeared as early as 7,000 years ago in Euroasia. In 2010 the state of Saxony-Anhalt registered the design of the Nebra Sky Disk as a trademark, successfully suing anyone who uses the disk’s likeness.
Exhibitions
Archipelago, Reinbeckhallen, Berlin, 2018, Goldrausch Künstlerinnen Projekt
Past Persephone, Meanwhile.Elsewhere, Berlin 2019, curated by Tobias Wachter