Kim Hong-Hee illuminates a vision of the history of Korean art in which no one is different Korean feminist artists: confront and deconstruct (2024). The curator and the scientist traces the history and the trajectory of Korean feminist artists from the 1970s to today around 15 themes, in particular bodily art, queer policy, ecofeminism and North American diaspora, through the tests of 42 artists – all except two were alive at the time of publication.
The structure of the publication is modeled after Kim's monthly column in the Kyungyang Shinmun Journal, published between 2021 and 2022, which considered the work of Korean artists through a feminist lens in 17 payments. Originally published in Korea by Youlhwadang earlier this year, Phaidon's book marks its translation in English. How does this treatment of Korean feminist art translates into Western readers?
A consideration is the strong influence of “k-feminism” on the West. In the wake of Trump's re -election, American social media Coopted Korea's Mid-2010S FRIGEN 4B, or “Four No's” movementstenography for Bihon,, Bichulsan,, BiyonaeAnd bisexOr “no marriage”, “no childbirth”, “no encounters” and “no sex with men”. But while declaring you a feminist is always taboo in Korea Relatively conservative and massively patriarchal companyWestern feminism has had time to develop for decades.
In this context, Kim gives a substantial overview of the Korean feminist movement while he believes himself with art to help the general reader, although he competes with the academic language. Kim, for example, trusts the public to decipher the difference between “non-modernism”, “anti-modernism”, “demodernism” and “post-modernism”, nuanced concepts that could be more decomposed for a non-specialist.
As a brief overview: Korean feminist art began in the early 1970s, marked by the Pyohyeon (Expression) Group, which resisted the modernist abstract works of the 1960s by emphasizing femininity through craft methods, including textiles and sewing. The movement gained ground in the mid -80s with the Yeoseong Misul Yeonguhoe (Women's Art Research Association), which perfected a realistic style which reflected the conditions of women who work. In the mid -1990s, Sinsaedae (New generation) Culture has challenged the world of existing commercial art by emphasizing gender and identity issues. The Korean feminist art of the 2000s reflected the world of globalized art by starting to incorporate the theory of intersectionality, a framework that explores how race, gender and class, among other identities, combine to create oppression and privilege systems.
The thematic chapters begin by discussing post -equality, which considers the female as it is built by social processes, as opposed to first wave feminism on biological, through the work of Yun Suknam and Jang Pa. Although four generations separate them – Yun is a pioneering feminist artist and a radical activity on painting artists, sculptures and installations, is an artist of maternity, sculptures and survivals Subali the hierarchies of gender and patriarchal standards – they both engage deeply with this conversation around the representation of femininity. The foreground of this debate, which is at the heart of the trajectory of feminism, builds a solid basis for understanding additional developments while stressing that such movements are not only linked when they emerged for the first time.
Kim follows this with a discussion on bodily art via the work of Lee BulOne of the most important conceptual artists in Korea, and the emerging figures Fi Jae Lee Look at leewho recently made her debut Turbine Hall commission at Tate Modern. The three artists use humanoid cyborgs and machines to explore how the female body appears in our post-human and hybrid condition, in which identity is not linked by its physical ship but rather built by information models. Kim establishes a link between the grotesque and monstrous aesthetics of artists, who breaks down the binary genre as well as the limits of normality.
Siren Eun Young Jung, Black Jaguar and Nahee Kim examine queer policy, demonstrating the diversity of calls from the category to inclusiveness, including the disturbance of perceived normativity and general civil rights. This chapter may be the best illustrates the Kim champion of fair intersectionality, demonstrating how the rupture of societal extractions linked to gender policy can make room for other vulnerable facets of society to be built, including disabled, refugees and workers.
Passing to socio -political subjects, the book examines the work of MENUK LIMSanghee Song, Yang Ah Ham and Ayoung Kim in relation to the art of resistance, which criticizes the implicit truths of modernism and the great stories associated with Western constructions of history and mythology, in particular in relation to the rapid urbanization of South Korea. These artists recommend what Kim calls the “small stories” of socially marginalized groups, including women, employing new media -based media practices that incorporate autobiographical stories from private sorrow and neglected public. An example is “New Town Ghost” by Lim (2005). In this performance piece, a female activist raptors poetry through a speaker to the rhythm of a drum through the occupied market of Yeongdeungpo de Seoul, singing the stories of souvenirs lost in the rapid development of marketed “new cities”.
The chapter of the North American diaspora also has strong political nuances, highlighting the work of late artists Theresa Hak Kyung Cha And Yong Soon Minas well as Jin-Me Yoon, who has all emigrated as a child. Kim borrows the expression of Homi K. Bhabha “the genealogy of this lonely figure” to describe the displacement inherent in migrant communities as a direct effect of globalization. She discusses, for example, the Min series Definition of moments (1992), which includes six self -portraits that ride words and numbers, representing historical links with its identity, including the 1960 Student uprisingTHE 1980 Gwangju Uprisingand the Los Angeles 1992 riots. These artists also consider the moved body of an Asian woman as a site of erasure, violence and instability, recognizing the unresponsive desire to return to a unified Korea or feel a feeling of belonging to America.
Overall, the book offers a vast intimate investigation into Korean feminist art, analyzing intergenerational female artists involved in the patriarchal canon of art history. With it more than three decades of experience in the field, especially as director of Seoul Museum of Art from 2012 to 2016, Kim's expertise as an early and lasting supporter of feminist art crosses. And the accompaniment test of the poet Kim Hyesoon rightly praises the writing “Breathless” of Kim Hong-Hee, which is settled on the specificity of the practice of each artist. The adaptation of its too academic language to more accessible terms could help integrate a wider readership, but Korean feminist artists However, there is the way in which these artists continue to break the limits of the patriarchal convention, while referring to a future where the objectives of feminism have long been achieved.
Korean feminist artists: confront and deconstruct (2024) written by Kim Hong-Hee with a contribution from Kim Hyesoon and published by Phagusis available for online purchase and via independent booksellers.
