Category: Art

Some Smart, Sophisticated Events for Smart, Sophisticated Busanites (And Me Too!)

Busan is GOOD! 부산이라 좋다!

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes. Source: iamcacophony.

Sorry that I’ve been so neglectful and absent these past few weeks.

One excuse is just being very busy settling into the new semester.

The other is that I seem to be just inundated with interesting events to attend and people to meet these days.

For reasons, this is a very novel experience for me. So, lets just say the abstract concept of declining invitations, because it turns out I do still need to write, pay the bills, and sleep, has been slow to sink in.

Forced to be very selective from now on then, here are five events in Busan this month I’d still absolutely attend if I could. Unfortunately I’ll only manage three though, because two clash, and another is being held somewhere I already go to very often. For that one, I’m going to be a gentleman and leave a spot open for you instead!

First up, just yesterday I discovered Cacophony, the very sensual performer in the opening image (homepage, YouTube, Instagram), who’s having a concert on Friday the 26th at Ovantgarde, in the Kyungsung University–Pukyong National University neighborhood. Still very much in the totally smitten and infatuated phase, I’ve only just begun processing her work frankly, and haven’t seen anything about her in English yet sorry. But, based just on that MV alone, I had no hesitation in dropping 30,000 won on a prepaid ticket!

Next, at the Art Lee Chae Gallery Cafe, located between exits 2 & 4 of my old neighborhood of Namcheon subway station (one stop over from Ovantgarde), local artist Jemma Pallett is currently holding an exhibition of her work until April 23. Open from 9am to 6:30pm every day, Jemma herself will be there to meet and talk about her paintings on Wednesday the 10th and 17th from 11 to 11:30am. (I’ll attend at least one of those sessions.)

Next, this Saturday, April 13 from 2-4pm, Union Station, in collaboration with Tell Me Busan, is having a traditional Korean alcohol tasting event. Union Station, one of my favorite places in Busan, is a recently opened makgeolli bar in Millak-dong, just an easy 5 minute walk from the North/top/far end of Gwangalli beach. Perfect for a quiet, intimate, and easily accessible alternative to the crowded restaurants and and bars on the beach, it’s owned and operated by the incredibly smart and sophisticated Michelle Lee, who has a PhD in Psychology in addition to brewing her own makgeolli. In other words, the perfect host!

Honestly, I don’t even particularly like makgeolli. Despite that, I will happily drink hers, and those she suggests—it’s that good a place (her anju are great too).

Alas, I won’t be attending this particular event sorry. Partially, because I already attend the Busan Chess Club there once a week, and partially because I already drag friends and dates there on top of that. (To the bar I mean—not to the chess club.) But mainly, because of a clash:

Hosted by one of my other favorite places in Busan, Naughty Muse Studios in Songjeong Beach, which is owned and operated by the incredibly smart and sophisticated Anna Bodorenko (yes, I’m beginning to notice a certain theme too), I can not stress just how much amazing art is continually going on there, what a creative community is centered around it, and how many talented people I’ve met through Anna. While I sadly had to give up on attending classes there myself, never being able to find the time to work on my skills in between sessions, I still try to attend as many events there as I can (especially the movie nights):

Finally, great minds thinking alike, Michelle from Union Station and Anna from Naughty Muse Studios are collaborating on a combined watercolor painting and makgeolli-tasting event at the former, at 7pm on Friday April 19. Only just finishing work about then and already spending too much time at Union Station though, this is the event I’ll step aside from for the sake of any interested readers securing a spot. Not at all because I used to win prizes for my sketches as a teenager, only to completely ruin them whenever I tried to combine them with watercolor painting…

If you can make any of these events, then Yay! And please say hi!^^

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If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

Visions of Corporeality | Artists at the Institute: Misha Japanwala—Webinar, 8AM Tuesday, November 14 in South Korea

(Also available as an in-person lecture at 6PM, Monday, November 13 at The Institute of Fine Arts, 1 East 78th Street, New York.)

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes. Image source (cropped): NYU The Institute of Fine Arts newsletter. NSFW images follow.

For the sake of shorter, more impactful and easy-to-remember announcements, I’m posting about notices about webinars and virtual lectures (that I’m able to attend) separately from now on.

Sorry that this one comes so last minute, but as far as I know registration for the webinar is available right up until the event itself:

“As part of the Institute of Fine Arts’ (Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, X/Twitter) ongoing tradition of inviting contemporary artists to speak about their practices in the Duke House Lecture Hall, this year’s Artists at the Institute Lecture Series invites four artists who explore the body as a site of confrontation. The body is continuously subjected to political, social, and aesthetic judgments both within and outside of the art historical canon. Whether it be through the ongoing battle with reproductive rights or the modification of the body in digital and social media, this phenomena proves to be omnipresent. Contemporary artists are constantly grappling with conceptions of corporeality, and each artist brings a diverse approach to what this means to them. This year’s series is committed to uplifting the voices of women working in representational practices across a range of media, styles, and backgrounds. Through feminist, cross-cultural, and art historical methods, these artists challenge the contours of corporeal form, transcending the limitations and restrictions that have bound the female body to the canonical canvas, and imagining how such liberation might transform aesthetics.”

Sources: NYU Institute of Fine Arts Instagram & Newsletter.

“For our second installment of Artists at the Institute, Visions of Corporeality, lecture series we are excited to welcome Misha Japanwala. Misha Japanwala (b. 1995, London, England and raised in Karachi, Pakistan) is a Pakistani artist and fashion designer, whose work is rooted in the rejection and deconstruction of shame attached to one’s body, and discussion of themes such as bodily autonomy, gender based violence, moral policing, sexuality and censorship.” (Instagram, homepage.)

“In our second installment of this series, Misha will touch upon what it means to be a Pakistani woman familiar with the historical objectification, commodification and control exerted on marginalized bodies by societies and systems enveloped in patriarchy.”

(Join in-person / Join virtually.)

And as a reward for those you still reading, please click here to register for the next virtual lecture I’ll be announcing tomorrow: “Remedy, Mobility, and the Feminized Consumption of Beauty in Post-Authoritarian South Korea,” a virtual talk featuring So-Rim Lee from the University of Pennsylvania, and presented by the Korean Studies Research Network. In South Korean time, that event will be on Thursday, November 16, again at 8am.

See you there!

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If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

Note to Self—Check Thy Orientalism!

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, an 18th Century woman of letters, had a keen eye for ignorant European male travel writers who projected their sexual fantasies onto Turkish women, and why they waxed lyrical about women’s suffering under barbarous Turkish men. Her skills at exposing hidden agendas, and at highlighting women’s shared experiences of misogyny, rather than stressing exoticism and difference, remain just as useful and necessary today.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes. Photo, right, by Kazi Mizan on Unsplash.

Now, I know you’re totally jealous I have a physical copy of Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms, a.k.a. “a sustained reflection on Orientalism, with feminist accents” by Lisa Lowe (1991), and not just an open-access PDF.

Or not? Perish the thought. Still, while this particular tome does make its central point that orientalism “is profoundly heterogeneous,” I can concede it’s also very academic and literary and critical-theory heavy, requiring a lot of concentration. So, if you’re actually just trying to impress fellow bibliophiles and geeks on the subway in the mornings with it, or beat crippling insomnia in the evenings when that fails to elicit the companionship you seek, much of it will simply fail to stick.

But of the two parts that did stand out to me, which I’ll highlight in two separate posts, I wasn’t expecting the first to make me feel so…uncomfortable.

Specifically, it was the second chapter on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters, a collection of her reflections on her travels through the Ottoman Empire between 1716 and 1718, published in 1763 just after her death. In those, she criticized European men’s writings about Turkish men and women for presenting the former as barbarous, and using the alleged civilized treatment of women in Christendom as evidence of that, compared to their supposed abject misery under Islam in Turkey. In other words, they presented a false dichotomy between a feminist West and patriarchal East that, well, you could probably see faint echoes of in my own first attempts writing about Korea nearly two decades ago.

Image: Young Woman Reading, 1880 by Osman Hamdi Bey (Turkish, 1842–1910).

Mercifully, the offending posts have long since been deleted. I don’t think I could ever have been accused of projecting my sexual fantasies onto Korean women like Montagu’s male contemporaries did Turkish women either, let alone doing so while acknowledging they had no knowledge on which to base those fantasies whatsoever, as we’ll see.

But that false dichotomy? Stressing the differences between the men and women ‘over there’ compared to ‘here,’ rather than emphasizing shared experiences and potential solutions to, say, overcoming the patriarchy?

That’s definitely something to be remain wary of. In particular, when so many negatives of women’s position in Korea are genuinely objectively worse than in the countries interested English-speaking readers tend to hail from, it’s deceptively easy for any Korea-related news to simply confirm one’s preexisting prejudices and stereotypes about Korean men and women, or to pander to those if you want your work to be read. And I’m just as open to temptation as anyone.

So, to help maintain that awareness, let me highlight the relevant passages from the second chapter of Critical Terrains for you here. Starting with the first mention of the letters on page 31:

Then on page 32, introducing the crucial additional theme that for all her proto-feminism, Montagu was also very elitist and aristocratic, both in her concerns and in the Turkish women she most interacted with. But for more on that, you will have to read the chapter for yourself sorry!

Then on page 38, on one of those European men waxing lyrical about what goes on in the fabled harems, despite never actually visiting one…

Continuing with yet another man doing the same:

Continuing past the page break into page 39:

Continuing:

Continuing:

Page 40, which I especially liked for its point about Turkish and European women’s shared experiences:

And finally from page 44 (NSFW image coming below):

If you’ll please bear with me a moment, Orientalism, I find, is a bit like the Theory of Relativity. (Hey, I did ask you.) As in, like my physics professor once pointed out back when I was studying to become a professional astronomer (it’s a long story), Einstein’s theory, for all the creativity, originality, and genius behind it, is actually quite simple to understand after a couple of lectures or good YouTube videos. Which is my somewhat arcane excuse for why, wanting to learn more about Lady Montagu, I consulted my other books exclusively devoted to Orientalism, and discovered to my horror and shame that I actually only had two: Culture and Imperialism by Edward Said (1993), and The Erotic Margin: Sexuality and Spatiality in Alterist Discourse by Irvin C. Schick (1999). Alas, Said didn’t mention Lady Montagu at all (perhaps it’s time to finally purchase Orientalism?). But Schick did…

…and then I finally noticed a certain similarity of cover theme with that of Critical Terrains. Potential accusations of hypocrisy by authors and/or publishers and a certain blogger aside though, and how much that extends to the genre as a whole or not (Culture and Imperialism actually has quite a bland cover), obviously both covers were used to sell more copies of both books. Or, to put it crudely, there was an agenda behind the choice to put naked Oriental women on both.

Which finally brings me to how, even 150 years after the publication of Montagu’s letters, Schick explains that the British public, industry, government, and press, for a wide variety of reasons and agendas, were all just too fundamentally committed to their own agendas—an alternative, collective ‘truth’ about the Orient so to speak—to really care less about what its men and women were actually like. Which is also why, sadly, Montagu’s letters ultimately made little impact:

From Pages 211-212:

And finally, from pages 50-51:

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If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

OMG YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS KOREAN FEMINIST DANCE PERFORMANCE

“Women have always been at the center of my work and world.”

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes. Image source: tumblbug.

Is contemporary Korean dance always as hypnotic as this? Have I been wholly misjudging it all these years?

Actually, if you’re at all knowledgeable, please reserve your answers for the comments. Better that most readers approach the video with no preconceptions like I did, puzzled at the notification from an unfamiliar YouTube channel on my phone. Better still, that first they turn off the lights, get close to their screens, plug in their headphones or ear buds, are slightly sleepy, drunk, or high…and be ready for their jaws to hit the floor:

The choreographer and performer is Jinyeob Cha (차진엽) founder of Collective A, an interdisciplinary dance performance group, and who is probably best known for having been the director of the choreography for the opening and closing ceremony of the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games. But the reason I personally was subscribed to her channel was because in March 2022, London Korea Links wrote about her and Collective A’s performance there of “MIIN: Body to Body,” in which Cha:

“…examines perceptions of beauty and femininity beyond societal norms and traditions.”

“Accompanied by a hypnotic soundscape created by two acclaimed musicians based in Seoul, Eun-yong Sim, from Korean Avant-rock band Jambinai, and haihm, an electronic musician, six female dancers flit between precise, discreet, feminine poses and aggressive, erratic movements to embody all aspects of a woman.”

“Miin (미인) is a Korean word meaning ‘beautiful person’, but is more often used as a synonym for ‘beautiful woman’. This work challenges the meaning of ‘beauty’ and encourages women to embrace their bodies as they are without succumbing to unrealistic expectations.”

Source: Collective A

You can read much more about her in—some—English at the Collective A website, and especially in a May 2018 interview at The Wonderful World of Dance, from where I took that lede. And for Korean speakers, I also recommend Tell You About Her: Korean Feminist Dance Since the 80s] 차진엽 Interview, which can (only) be watched on her channel.

She’d slipped my mind though, because this was the first upload on her channel in a year. There seems to be little information specifically about the “원형하는 몸: round1” (“Body Go-round: round 1”) performance in English available too (or at least that I could find), which is surprising because it was actually first performed in 2021. What I could find then, was a quick explanation in the blurb to another UK performance in September 2022, that explained it was:

“…a genre-bending, mixed reality, dance spectacle inspired by the process of melting to evaporation in the water cycle.”

“Looming above the stage, a giant ice formation slowly melts as performers respond to the process of circulation and transition through dance. Each drop shaping the sound and visual landscape of the stage influences the interaction of each body in the space.”

Image source: tumblbug.

And in Korean, a blurb from the tumblbug page used to raise funds for it, that at least hints at feminist themes:

차진엽 작업의 중심은 한 인간으로서의 인간성, 여성으로서의 여성성을 둘러싼 몸의 안과 밖을 연결하기 위해 몸을 둘러싸고 있는 세상에 관심을 두며, 몸/몸짓 을 통해 끊임없이 존재에 대해 질문한다. 이는 곧 예술행위를 통해 자기 자신의 본질적 가치를 찾아가는 여정이며 collective A의 궁극적인 모토이다.

The center of Cha Jin-yeop’s work focuses on the world surrounding the body in order to connect the inside and outside of the body surrounding humanity as a human being and femininity as a woman, and constantly questions existence through body/gesture. This is a journey to discover one’s own intrinsic value through artistic activities and is the ultimate motto of collective A.

And finally, a in-depth making-of video on her channel, in which she likely expands on those themes at some point:

Only “likely” though, because of her background (so…very likely!), and because I haven’t had the chance to watch myself yet sorry—powerpoints for tomorrow’s lectures beckon. But please do let me know if you’re interested but can’t speak Korean, and I’ll watch properly and translate the relevant segments as soon as I can. (I’m interested too!)

In the meantime, why not check out more of her performances on her YouTube channel? ;)

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

“Yoni Garden” Exhibition Opens in Gwangalli Tonight!

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes. Image sources: (@gallery_gwangan) left, right.

Sorry for the last-minute notice for tonight’s opening from 6 to 8pm. But fortunately the exhibition itself, about “women’s sexuality and life stories reinterpreted through traditional Buddhist lacquer (통 옻칠로 재해석 된 여성의 성 그리고 삶 이야기),” will be held at @gallery_gwangan until Wednesday May 10. All are welcome, and tonight will also feature free wine and food!

Unfortunately, I’ve been having trouble finding any more information about artist Gabby Chu (가비추) and her work.* But presumably she’ll be there tonight, and she will also be present at the gallery for the entire exhibition (note the opening hours in the blue poster). On Saturday the 6th, she will be giving a talk (in Korean) about exhibiting overseas too.

See you there!

*Update: Gabby’s Instagram can be found at gabby_chu_ottchil, and her personal website at Gabbychu.com. I can also confirm she’s every bit as amazing and creative as I expected, and is very happy for you to visit and chat in English or Korean about art, feminism, and/or sexuality :)

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If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

For the Sophisticated Busanite Looking for Something to do Indoors This Rainy Weekend…

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes. Image source: object_hood.

…Allow me to recommend the “Love Story in Spring” art exhibition at Objecthood (오브제후드), a small gallery in Mangmi/Suyeong-dong, which unfortunately finishes on Sunday (not the 23rd like the website suggests).

Please see the exhibition description for more information (scroll down for English), the about page for a map, and here, here, and here for Objecthood’s Instagram and those of featured artists Kyung Hee Min (민경희) and Minzo King (민조킹).

Perhaps I’ll see you there on Saturday? If so, then please make sure to say hi—rest assured, the surroundings won’t at all make me feel too shy or embarrassed to talk! ;)

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

On “Women Painting Women” (NSFW)

I find the artwork mentioned in an already awesome podcast on “Women Painting Women,” to help you even better enjoy it.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes. My tongue-in-cheek choice of photo by Andre Moura @Pexels. Photo by Andre Moura: https://www.pexels.com/photo/painting-woman-s-face-3991468/Photo by Andre Moura: https://www.pexels.com/photo/persons-eye-with-blue-and-orange-color-face-paint-3991469/

It’s a real chore sometimes, attempting to sound smart through posting original content.

Much better then, to deceive by association, by letting you know about any intelligent-sounding books, podcasts, and films I encounter.

The problem with that method however, is that too ultimately entails actually engaging with new material. Otherwise, the very next stranger I try to impress may challenge my recommendations, embarrassing me in front of the entire cocktail party. There’s also the small matter of providing genuinely useful information to my readers too, as well as not wasting their time.

But when it’s worth the time investment, it’s worth it. So, without any further ado, allow me to present a recent podcast interview of Andrea Karnes, Chief Curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, about her ongoing exhibition there (and accompanying book) titled Women Painting Women. As interviewer Dan Hill of EQ Spotlight explains:

The book documents a wide-ranging exhibit inclusive of women as both the makers and subjects of paintings. The artists hail from around the world, and over the past half-century. Our conversation took several directions. One was to discuss the power of the gaze; who’s looking, who’s being seen, and the poses evident more a matter of self-agency or passivity. Another angle was the body itself, with these female images being more realistic and often far less glamorous than commercial popular culture allows for. Third, what subject matter tropes are being overturned – from Christianity to pornography, and points in between. As the exhibit strived to accomplish, there should be something here for everyone – women especially.

It’s a genuinely enjoyable and informative interview, critically engaging with the (evil, objectifying, brutish) male gaze and (sweet, butterflies and puppies, emotionally-based) female gaze while also being refreshingly absent of jargon and dogma. It’s only a very doable 30 minutes in length too, unlike most other New Books Network interviews.

And yet, the subject is art. While it remains entirely possible to enjoy and learn a great deal from the interview as is, it was frustrating not being able to see the art being discussed as I listened (some of which, jumping ahead, was very different to how I’d imagined it). The book is priced a little prohibitively for me too, let alone a plane ticket to Texas.

So, for your sake and mine, I’ve collected all of the artworks mentioned in the interview below in order when they’re mentioned, for you to follow along as you listen yourself. Being very wary of avoiding potential copyright claims though, I can only allow myself to post these small thumbnails sorry. But, if you do click on those, they’ll take you to far bigger versions, many of which are located in equally interesting articles about the artist and/or exhibition. Enjoy!

(7:50-8:30) “A Precious Blessing with a Poodle Up-doo,” 2019, by Somaya Critchlow (right).

Preceded by a discussion from 6:40 on the central importance of the subject meeting the viewer’s gaze instead of looking away (although I disagree with Andrea Karnes that the pink wig hiding her eyes doesn’t significantly diminish it in this piece). See also the recently published “Photographer Renée Jacobs Sees Her Female Nudes As Activism” (NSFW) at AnOther, for Jacob’s argument that “terms such as male gaze and female gaze are fraught. If it was up to me, I would replace them with the empowered gaze and disempowered gaze” (italics in original), as well as “The Painter [Joan Semmel] Who Directed Her Resolute Gaze at Herself” at HyperAllergic.

(8:30-9:30) “A Little Taste Outside of Love,” 2007, by Mickalene Thomas (left).

A connection not mentioned in the interview, now that I can see the work for myself it’s obvious it’s channeling—indeed, challenging—Amedeo Modigliani’s “Nu couché (sur le côté gauche).”

(9:30-11:20) “Self-Portrait Naked with My Mother II,” 2020, by Chantal Joffe (right).

(12:55-17:30) “Strategy (North Face, Front Face, South Face),”1994, by Jenny Saville (left).

Please see also Dallas Voice and GlassTire for photos of the artwork at the exhibition itself, for a sense of how the artwork looms over visitors and seems to ask questions of them.

(14:35, in passing) “Pregnant Woman,” 1971, by Alice Neel (right).

Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to confirm if this is precisely the (unnamed) work referred to in the interview. However, Andrea Karnes does mention that the subject looks extremely awkward and uncomfortable in it, which is certainly the case here!

(17:30-20:20) “The Turkish Bath,” 1973, by Sylvia Sleigh (left).

Andrea Karnes acknowledges the irony and contradiction of having a painting of men in an exhibition of women by women, but includes it to highlight the restrictions on depictions of female sexuality by cishet female artists in the 1970s, who were regularly censored or had exhibitions closed down for depicting men the same way women routinely were (and still are).

(21:30-22:20) “Yellow Studio,” 2021, by Lisa Yuskavage (right).

Again, my apologies for being unable to confirm if this is the (unnamed) work referred to.

(22:20-23:50) “Yayoi,” 2021, by Christiane Lyons (left).

Named for the Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama.

(23:50-26:10) “Weenie Roast Wrestlers,” 2019, by Jenna Gribbon (right).

Not going to lie—I need to fill this space to deal with some formatting issues I’m having in this post. Will doing so with a link to Gribbon’s Instagram suffice? ;)

(26:10-28:00) “Crucifixion I,” 1969, by Eunice Golden (left).

I appreciate the notion of bodies as landscapes Andrea Karnes explores in her final discussion about this piece. But for the life of me, I just can’t find the disembodied penis she mentions. Can you?

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If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)