Uncomfortable, But Must Be Confronted:

In the history of contemporary Korean art, very few exhibits by Korean feminist artists have been shown since the 2000 exhibit A-bang-gung: Jongmyo Occupation Project by the feminist artist group Ipgim. It is difficult for artists to continue to produce their works in Korea, if they are not already famous, or if they do not have support from Arts Council Korea, a regional government, or a private foundation. In this sense, it is reasonable to say that producing artwork is truly a matter of survival for artists pursuing activist art that encompasses social commentary; feminist art is no exception.

In the early 2000’s, feminist artists were not very visible in the realm of Korean fine art due to the depressed atmosphere of the feminist movement. However —fortunately or unfortunately —due to a chain of events in 2015 such as a young Korean man with the surname Kim joining ISIS because he hated feminism and the appearance of the feminist online community ‘Megalia,’ hate crimes and hate speech against women became a hot issue and conditions began to change gradually. Feminist groups started to form in art schools, and news of feminist artists’ activity began to be heard every now and again. It was in this state of affairs that I visited an exhibition by the feminist visual art community Sisterhat.

▲ Set of 6 Pussy Postcards by Sisterhat (Source: Sisterhat Twitter/X @sisterhat)

Feminist Art as Activism

Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Monet’s Water Lillies—that is what the general public, who did not major in art, thinks of when someone mentions “fine art”: a masterpiece hung on the wall of a museum or, at least, a completed expression of an artistic intention rendered in a specific medium, something to please the viewer’s visual and aesthetic sensibilities. However, contemporary art no longer aims to achieve these imperatives; no longer is the goal a masterpiece hung on the wall.

Many contemporary fine artists seek to actively engage with society by exposing social problems and making them into an issue. For them, art is not only an end, but also a means—a tool—for activism. The works produced with this intention or through it do not stimulate people’s sensibility by so-called aesthetic beauty; rather, they create a discomfort which is not easy to face. Feminist art is—without a doubt—at the forefront of contemporary art’s effort to make us uncomfortable rather than aesthetically pleased.

This aspect can be found in the works of Sisterhat, who started their work identifying themselves as a feminist visual art community. Sisterhat’s activism reflects women’s issues, such as inequality, and draws attention to them–thus increasing public awareness and urging action to remedy injustice. To start a discussion on the human rights of sex workers in Miari [a red-light district in Seoul] in 2015, Sisterhat chose ‘sexual violence’ as the theme for their exhibition Ordinary Violence which opened at the Seongbuk Seoul Art Space on April 14, 2016.

Hello, Sisterhat!

The most direct and violent damage which men can inflict upon women is sexual violence. Sexual violence not only leaves physical damage but also deep psychological scars on the victim;  moreover, it stigmatizes the victims in a social atmosphere in which women’s virginity is considered to be of the utmost importance, thus inflicting irreparable psychological pain and leading them to hide or minimize the fact of the damage. Further harm is also found within laws and policies in which the victims need to prove sexual violence, even as the investigators are ignorant that this causes second and third-hand sexual violence—a tendency that has constantly been criticized as a serious problem.

In this exhibition, Sisterhat tried to change “the direction of the existing discourse on sexual violence” by projecting the image of a predator, not the victim. Along with this image was the idea to represent the fact that most cases of sexual violence occur between acquaintances (seventy to eighty percent of all sexual crimes are committed by an acquaintance) and that we are never sure if sexually violent predators exist near us; it even suggests the possibility that potential predators are among the people we know well.

Sisterhat stated that they created their works by directly communicating with survivors of sexual violence and engaging in discussions with a counseling center for sexual violence. The exhibition space is filled with reconstructed images of predators based on sexual violence survivors’ documentation which, by itself, occupies one entire wall in the exhibition space.

▲ Yim Ee-hye’s Untitled. Pen on paper, 14.85×10.5 cm, 2016 ©Sisterhat’s exhibition Ordinary Violence

There are works by five artists. Im Ee-hye’s Untitled series is  unforgettable. It shows undistinguishable shapes resembling a human face, a human figure, or parts of a human body, intermingled and fragmented. Black marks are roughly speckled about, creating the feeling of instability filled with terrible and painful memories of horror, attempting but unable to forget as the dark spots erupt. Lee Jeong-eun’s Untitled series suggests the many stories of a crime scene and victim, of gazes following and torturing the victim, and of social stigma; they do not let the spectator contemplate the work with a light heart.

Sexual violence by acquaintances occurs because of the gender hierarchy that exists in the victim’s relationship with the perpetrator. In general, men hold the power in this hierarchical relationship, not women. There are many cases of sexual violence generated in this kind of relationship being hidden for long periods of time. The perpetrators control the victims’ psyche by providing reasons like the importance of the relationship, or instilling the fear of society’s views should the relationship be disclosed, thus leading the forced or voluntary concealment of the sexual violence.

In Juna Lee’s work there is a parasitic plant, which embodies the figure of a perpetrator, encroaching on its victim’s mind, thus controlling the relationship and the situation. The work by Kwon Soon-young visualizes the violence that may be hidden within. Using the metaphor of a tentacled beast, representing a perpetrator who commits violence at the very moment that a victim is defenseless, Maekjoo’s work reveals the vulnerability of women exposed to unfathomable terrors and the accompanying sense of dread.

The indefinite terror which the artists express through a victim’s memory is an emotion that most women must have felt. We are familiar with this ill-defined sense of dread; on the other hand, this emotion is not familiar to men. Their discomfort arises out of the fact that “men” are defined as the category of perpetrator. Even though sexual violence is basically considered not as an individual’s issue, but as a society’s systematic problem, couldn’t the structural problem be solved by the transformation of individuals? So, please feel, understand, and sympathize after seeing Sisterhat’s works—even if they make you feel uncomfortable.

▲ The “Ordinary Violence” exhibition poster by Sisterhat, a feminist visual arts collective. April 11-28, 2016. (Seoul Art Space Seongbuk)

The Politics of Feminist Art Urge an “Unfamiliar Perspective”

Feminist art can be uncomfortable to people who live far from feminism, which advocates women’s rights, equality between women and men. Feminist art points out problems in a wide range of areas, from social policies to culture to private everyday life issues, encompassing such concerns as the glass ceiling, invisible entry barriers, public space issues which women confront, the wage gap, one-sidedly distributed domestic work, sexual virginity forced upon women only, standardized criteria for beauty required for women only, and so forth. 

Feminist art is an artistic genre which proposes to the public visual expressions of the problems that women and society’s minorities confront. Feminist art asks for the reformation of legal and social policies that are irrational toward women, criticizes patriarchy and its implicit and inherent masculinity; it also negates the standardized beauty norm, advocates for a “spontaneous” beauty, and proposes an alternative way of caring for one’s appearance.

Feminist art suggests an unfamiliar view to us. Feminist artworks show us something we haven’t felt before, seen before, spoken before, or acted upon before, allowing us to directly feel and experience what we couldn’t before. This is the aesthetics and politics of feminist art. I hope that feminist art, which we haven’t seen much of for a while, will be resurgent in our troubling times of misogyny. So happy to meet you, Sisterhat. [Translated by Jieun Lee]

*Original article: http://ildaro.com/7442 Published: April. 20, 2016