Kim Hong-hee illuminates a imaginative and prescient of Korean artwork historical past by which nobody is othered in Korean Feminist Artists: Confront and Deconstruct (2024). The curator and scholar traces the historical past and trajectory of Korean feminist artists from the Seventies by way of at present round 15 themes, together with physique artwork, queer politics, ecofeminism, and the North American diaspora, throughout essays on 42 artists — all however two of whom had been alive on the time of publication.
One consideration is “K-feminism’s” sturdy affect on the West. Within the wake of Trump’s reelection, American social media has co-opted Korea’s mid-2010s fringe 4B, or “Four No’s” motion, shorthand for bihon, bichulsan, biyeonae, and bisekseu, or “no marriage,” “no childbirth,” “no dating,” and “no sex with men.” However whereas declaring your self a feminist remains to be taboo inside Korea’s comparatively conservative and overwhelmingly patriarchal society, Western feminism has had time to develop over a long time.
E book cowl of Kim Hong-hee, Korean Feminist Artists: Confront and Deconstruct (2024), printed by Phaidon
Towards this backdrop, Kim offers a considerable overview of the Korean feminist motion because it intersects with artwork to assist the overall reader, albeit one rife with educational language. Kim, as an illustration, trusts the viewers to decipher the distinction between “non-modernism,” “anti-modernism,” “de-modernism,” and “post-modernism,” nuanced ideas that may very well be damaged down extra for a non-specialist.
As a short overview: Korean feminist artwork began within the early Seventies, marked by the Pyohyeon (Expression) Group, which resisted the modernist summary work of the Sixties by emphasizing femininity by way of craft strategies, together with textiles and stitching. The motion gained traction within the mid-Eighties with the Yeoseong misul yeonguhoe (Girls’s Artwork Analysis Affiliation), which honed a realist model that mirrored the circumstances of working ladies. By the mid-Nineties, sinsaedae (New Technology) tradition challenged the present industrial artwork world by emphasizing problems with gender and id. Korean feminist artwork of the 2000s mirrored the globalized artwork world by starting to include intersectionality principle, a framework that explores how race, gender, and sophistication, amongst different identities, mix to create techniques of oppression and privilege.
The thematic chapters start by discussing post-essentialism, which views female-ness as constructed by social processes, versus first-wave feminism’s deal with the organic, by way of the work of Yun Suknam and Jang Pa. Although 4 generations separate them — Yun is a pioneering feminist artist and radical activist specializing in themes of motherhood throughout portray, sculpture, and set up, whereas Jang is an rising artist whose multimedia work subverts gender hierarchies and patriarchal norms — they each have interaction deeply with this dialog across the illustration of womanhood. Foregrounding this debate, which is central to the trajectory of feminism, builds a strong basis to grasp additional developments whereas emphasizing that such actions will not be solely tied to the time at which they first emerged.
Yun Suknam, “Genealogy” (1993) (courtesy the artist)
Kim follows this with a dialogue of physique artwork by way of the work of Lee Bul, one in all Korea’s most distinguished conceptual artists, and rising figures Fi Jae Lee and Mire Lee, who just lately debuted her Turbine Corridor Fee on the Tate Fashionable. All three artists make use of cyborgs and humanoid machines to discover how the feminine physique figures into our post-human, hybridized situation, whereby id just isn’t sure by its bodily vessel however as a substitute constructed by way of patterns of data. Kim attracts connection between the artists’ grotesque and monstrous aesthetics, which breaks down the gender binary in addition to the boundaries of normality.
siren eun younger jung, Black Jaguar, and Nahee Kim look at queer politics, demonstrating the variety of the class’s requires inclusivity, together with disruption of perceived normativity and broad civil rights. This chapter maybe greatest exemplifies Kim’s championing of equitable intersectionality, demonstrating how breaking down societal extractions linked to gender politics could make room for different weak aspects of society to be uplifted, together with individuals with disabilities, refugees, and laborers.
Shifting to sociopolitical topics, the e-book examines the work of Minouk Lim, Sanghee Tune, Yang Ah Ham, and Ayoung Kim in relation to resistance artwork, which critiques modernism’s implicit truths and grand narratives related to Western constructions of historical past and mythology, notably in relation to South Korea’s fast urbanization. These artists advocate for what Kim calls the “little narratives” of socially marginalized teams, together with ladies, using research-based new media practices that incorporate autobiographical tales of missed personal and public grief. One instance is Lim’s “New Town Ghost” (2005). On this efficiency piece, a feminine activist raps slam poetry by way of a loudspeaker to the beat of a drum by way of Seoul’s busy Yeongdeungpo Market, singing the tales of recollections misplaced to the fast growth of commercialized “new towns.”
Fi Jae Lee, “The Intestine Woman” (2008) (courtesy the artist)
The chapter on the North American diaspora additionally has sturdy political undertones, highlighting the work of the late artists Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and Yong Quickly Min, in addition to Jin-me Yoon, who all emigrated as youngsters. Kim borrows Homi Okay. Bhabha’s phrase “the genealogy of that lonely figure” to explain the displacement inherent in migrant communities as a direct impact of globalization. She discusses, as an illustration, Min’s collection Defining Moments (1992), which incorporates six self-portraits that overlap with phrases and numbers, representing historic hyperlinks to her id, together with the 1960 scholar rebellion, the 1980 Gwangju Rebellion, and the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. These artists additionally take into account the displaced physique of an Asian girl as a website of erasure, violence, and instability, acknowledging the unfilled need to return to a unified Korea or really feel a way of belonging in America.
As a complete, the e-book gives an expansive and intimate survey of Korean feminist artwork, analyzing inter-generational feminine artists intervening in artwork historical past’s patriarchal canon. Together with her greater than three a long time of expertise working within the subject, together with as director of the Seoul Museum of Artwork from 2012 to 2016, Kim’s experience as an early and enduring proponent of feminist artwork shines by way of. And poet Kim Hyesoon’s accompanying essay rightfully praises Kim Hong-hee’s “breathless” writing, which is tuned to the specificity of every artist’s apply. Adapting its overly educational language to extra accessible phrases might assist incorporate a broader readership, however Korean Feminist Artists nonetheless exemplifies how such artists proceed to interrupt down the boundaries of patriarchal conference, whereas hinting at a future the place the objectives of feminism have lengthy been met.
Lee Eunsae, “ᅩᅩ” (2016) (photograph by Sangtae Kim)
Korean Feminist Artists: Confront and Deconstruct (2024) written by Kim Hong-hee with a contribution from Kim Hyesoon and printed by Phaidon, is obtainable for buy on-line and thru unbiased booksellers.