Cultural and National Elements in the Works of Contemporary South Korean Artists

Antonova Aleksandra Andreevna Post-graduate student, Assistant, the department of Culturology and Art History, Far Eastern Federal University 690091, Russia, Primorskii krai, g. Vladivostok, ul. Sukhanova, 8 antonova-sasha@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Modern art, despite its more than a century-old history, still remains the field of art criticism in which many discussions and contradictions arise. The accents and themes of contemporary artists, forms of expression and techniques, and the specifics of message mediums create a unique variety of unique works around the world.

Asian contemporary art has its own specifics, bright representatives and history of development. In it, the contemporary art of South Korea is particularly highlighted, since in addition to the broad artistic community, it also has state support for creative directions that are associated with the cultural characteristics of the "Korean wave" ^[1].

The relevance of addressing the topic of South Korean art is due to the uniqueness of the hallyu phenomenon and the sharp rise in its popularity in the first decades of the XXI century.  Factors influencing the breakthrough of South Korean culture on a global scale: the synthesis of Western and Eastern cultural standards, the common Confucian cultural and historical context of East Asian countries; public and private measures to support the "Korean wave" ^[2].

The successful adaptation of foreign cultural ideas through creative perception and subsequent transformation of content with the inclusion of national specifics has led to the creation of unique and understandable media products worldwide. Since the countries in which the "Korean wave" received primary distribution were part of the sinosphere and were influenced by the Confucian tradition, their value orientations have some commonality, which allowed to accelerate the diffusion of "hallyu" content ^{[3, p. 111]}.

The phenomenon of the "Korean wave" is based on the economic success of South Korea, which allowed local producers, with the support of large businesses, to develop effective marketing strategies to promote hallyu in Asia and around the world ^{[4, p. 166]}.  

A number of Russian authors, E. A. Khokhlova and L. I. Kireeva, are actively researching modern Korean art. Their works are mainly devoted to highlighting the historical typologization of art trends of the last century. A number of studies are devoted to the biographies of individual artists and the reasons for their success.  There are also works in the scientific field that are generally devoted to the popularity of products of modern South Korean culture around the world. However, the analysis of the works of individual artists from the point of view of broadcasting issues of local peculiarities of the country in their work is carried out in this study for the first time.

The aim of the study is to problematize national identity in contemporary artistic creativity using the example of the works of a number of South Korean artists.

The objectives of the study are to compile a sample of works, as well as to identify factors that reflect cultural and national characteristics in the work of contemporary artists.

The subject of the study is the specifics of the works of individual South Korean artists (Kimsuja, Seo Do Ho, Lee Soo Kyung, Kwang Yong Chan, Park Changyeon, Ham Kyung, Yoon Seongnam), whose work is directly related to the national identity of the country.

Since the second half of the twentieth century. For Koreans, the concept of "modernity" in art has ceased to be Western and has been filled with new cultural meanings. The main trend in the perception of modernity proceeds in the direction of a harmonious combination of global and traditional. Korean art often appeals to concepts and images inherent in its local specificity, putting it into forms or translating universal problems and themes through it ^{[5, p. 50]}.

Speaking of contemporary Korean artists, there is no need to single out the main characters or specific directions. Postmodernism, which came to Korea in the 1990s, became a source of pluralism, which allows a huge variety of art practices to coexist without the need to single out the dominant one ^{[5, p. 54]}. That is why in this work we will not talk about the specifics of the concepts and creative path of individual artists, but rather about those local (national), unique and traditional aspects and motifs that are used in the most relevant works. The local features of successful works by hotel artists are investigated in order to try to identify and characterize those unique cultural elements that influence the popularity of certain works.

The specificity of the works of South Korean artists analyzed in this work is based on their use of elements of traditional Korean culture.

It is necessary to start the research with the first artist Kimsuja, who entered the world stage with the question of "nomadism". Her works successfully combine national identity and the experience of living among strangers in a foreign culture.

She entered art in the late 1980s, when the issue of identity was on the agenda, when in the face of unfolding globalization it seemed important to defend the rights of minorities and the right to differences ^{[6, p.312]}. At the same time, this issue was not something distant and speculative for the artist. Born in South Korea, she moved to New York, thus learning the emigrant experience. In her art, she persistently addresses the realities that connect her with her homeland. And yet she uses these motives not to express a connection with her place of birth, but simply because they are culturally close and familiar to her.

Kimsuja uses bottari - colored shawls (or bedspreads), in which Korean women pack things for moving), in her series of her works on migration. (Bottari, 2005, 2014, 2016, 2017) ^{[7, p. 555]}. The traditional Korean bedspread, which is used to pack and store personal belongings, Kimsuja transforms into a metaphor for structures and connections.

 If we analyze the main works with Bottari on the artist's website, we can identify a number of patterns. Traditional bedspreads are always used in conjunction with elements of other cultures. For example, bottari are not created from traditional Korean fabrics, but from the bedspreads of local immigrants and used clothes in Paris in the work "Bottari" (2007). Flags of different countries and bottari in the work "To Breathe – Zone of Nowhere" (2018). They reveal not attempts to present acceleration in their culture, but rather the presentation of close and familiar traditional things in the process of living in a foreign culture.

Bottari are also a symbol of physicality, echoing the life of the artist, who has been a nomad since early childhood. Their form and content reveal the universal tension between eternal displacement and the desire to preserve the elements of permanence.

In the artist's work, from the central elements of Bottari's installations, they move to secondary roles, which simply indicate that the works belong to the authorship of Kimsuja. But at the same time, they do not completely disappear from her projects, remaining a kind of personal signature. For example, in the series of large-scale conceptual paintings made from raw stretched linen canvases "Sowing Into Painting" (2020). Kimsuja expands this philosophy by making objects anthropologically specific to the surrounding area and culture, linking textiles with the social relations of their production and origin. On the floor of the gallery, the artist installs several of her sculptures by Bottari, instead of the traditional silk bedspreads, she uses the same linen cloth for them, thereby making them secondary accomplices of her work.

The theme of nomadism is especially strongly revealed in one of the works in the series "Bottari Truck – Migrateurs", where Kimsuja stands with her back to the camera, her long hair fluttering in time with the movement of the truck, and black clothes contrast with bright fabrics. Kimsuja travels motionless. Her body seems to be gradually disappearing, taking with it the constant instability of the human condition.

Kimsuja is one of the brightest representatives of Korean contemporary art, who uses the same cultural artifact in her works, filling it with different meanings and ideas.

Another representative of the Korean art community, Seo Do Ho also raises issues of human migration in the modern world. With the help of translucent cotton fabric, he reproduces the living spaces that were his home at different times. The specificity of the material - a traditional cultural element – is the fabric from which folk costumes (hanbok) are sewn. Through such "textile architecture", the artist touches on the following issues: "home, physical spaces, displacement, memory, individuality and collectivity ^{[5, p. 49]}.

Endless weightless stairs, rooms, stoves, doors and even toilets made of airy fabric are represented in his most famous work "Home Within Home Within Home Within Home" ("House inside the house inside the house inside the house inside the house"), which was exhibited at the MMSA Museum in Seoul. The "smaller" of the houses is the father's house in Seoul (South Korea), it is fanned by nostalgia for the wonderful time of childhood. Around it stands a more modern building – a mock-up of a house in the American city of Providence (Rhode Island), where So Do Ho settled after moving to the United States. The work is a conceptual structure and unites several places and cultures with each other. Since the transparent fabric structure not only reveals all the places where the author lived, it is also located in the memorial space of the museum. The inner sanctuary of this massive and translucent installation is a national Korean house built in the style prevailing in the country until the 20th century, and its shell is a Western-style house with some Victorian elements ^{[6, p. 312]}.

 Another of his works looks like a traditional Korean house "Bridging home" stuck between two typical Liverpool houses. Despite the reference to the theme of nomadism, it is imbued with national motifs. This project touches on such a delicate topic as the mixing of cultures: how does an Asian house feel in such an environment, and what do the houses between which it is located think about it.

The work raises many important cultural issues and reflects the nature of a person's individual identity.  Revealing the dual cultural identity of a migrant who may outwardly show signs of cultural assimilation, but whose heart and soul remain encoded traditions and values assimilated to their place of origin.  The traditional fabric and architecture of Korean houses in his works is the embodiment of the space that an immigrant carries throughout the experience of living in a foreign country and culture.

The themes of history, modernity and the uniqueness of culture are combined in the artistic objects, images and performances of the artist Lee Soo Kyung. Many of her works combine various historical references, for example, combinations of Tibetan Buddhist paintings on a silk scroll (thangka) depicting a meditative process combined with the graphic style of rock paintings from the era of the Kogure dynasty. By linking the traditions of the past (religion, pottery, porcelain vases, patterns and drawings) with the real present, they symbolize the transcendence of being.

But the importance of Lee Soo Kyung's work lies in the cultural elements she uses in her work. The connection between tradition and reality (Korean and European culture) is presented in the work "Translated Vases Albisola" (2001), where a modern ceramics master in Italy creates 12 vases of Korean porcelain at the request of the artist. While working at a residence in Albisol (Italy 2001), Lee Soo-kyung read a poem to a local potter praising the white porcelain of the Joseon era. Then she asked him to decorate the twelve vessels the way he imagined eighteenth-century Korean porcelain. The creation of these vases was the translation and transculturation of the white vases of the Joseon dynasty into hybrid objects intertwining shapes and images with Korean and Italian regional cultural features [8. p. 14]. Korean porcelain is also used in her most famous series of works, Translated Ceramics, for which she erects tall, chaotic, deformed sculptures from fragments of discarded products found in pottery workshops. ^{[5, p.62]} "For me, fragments are like seeds that begin a new life. That is, in the sense that the rise and fall of the object ends and the taming of the next wave of growth and extinction begins." [8. P. 16]. Skilled ceramicists reproduce traditional Korean ceramics, and vases with minor defects are destroyed to preserve the rarity and value of the surviving masterpieces. Lee Soo Kyung puts these broken pots together like three-dimensional puzzles and covers up the cracks with gold. In this way, the artist interferes with their structure and fabricates her own narratives.

Another way to incorporate traditions into your work is to reproduce patterns from Korean vases on Korean silk paper in the Farewell project (2005). On the reverse side of the paintings, the artist, according to strict instructions and processes, applies an image of the Joseon dynasty talisman, which, according to legend, has mystical powers.  The theme of religion and Korean mythology is revealed in the sculpture "Absolute Zero" (2008). Absolute Zero combines found religious and Korean mythological metal objects into a single sculpture, and then hundreds of candles are lit and melted

Almost all of Lee Soo Kyung's projects reflect both the national aspects of Korean culture and global issues of our time, including rethinking the human attitude to the planet and humanity ^[9].

Another artist who reveals both Western and purely Asian motifs in his work is Kwan Yong Chan. While studying in the United States, he was interested in abstract expressionism, but after returning to his homeland in Korea, he invented his own technique for creating three-dimensional works. Abstraction and expressionism did not leave his works, but manifested themselves in such elements as shape and color.  The very technology of creation is unique, and repeats itself from series to series: three-dimensional objects of various shapes wrapped in antique mulberry paper with inscriptions in Korean and Chinese, colored with tea or pigment. This paper has been widely used throughout Korea for centuries and is used in various fields, from the manufacture of household items to works of art and original design (http://www.museum.ru/N79299 ). The artist's original technique is inspired by his childhood memories of medicinal herbs wrapped in hanzhi and hanging from the ceiling of the local doctor's office.

For an artist, pieces of styrofoam wrapped in mulberry paper are the basic units of information, the basic cells of life, which exists not only in art, but also in individual social events or historical facts. By attaching these fragments one by one to a two-dimensional surface, the author shows how basic units of information can create both harmony and conflict. Assembled in a bizarre composition, they invariably remind of the importance of historical memory and at the same time call for renewal and rethinking (http://www.museum.ru/N79299 ).

Original art objects in the form of wall panels are round, oval hemispheres, squares and vortex-shaped images – products of an artistic desire to create strong tension and dramatic movement on the canvas, as well as a multi—valued metaphor. Small, minimalistic pieces of mulberry paper are finally reborn through the act of attaching them to the canvas, creating a clash between information, as well as defining the moment of disappearance and death. The most famous is the series of works “Aggregations" (Associations). It consists of objects made up of small triangular shapes. The artist uses old accounting reports, personal notes and even love letters - everything that can be associated with vivid emotions. Here, the text serves both as an ornament and a carrier of meaning. This is how Kwan Yong Chan's bundles become a kind of metaphor: they can save lives, store memories and tell stories (https://www.askerigallery.com/exhibition/moskva-seul-obshchie-zamysly /).

Today, when people say goodbye to paper, they forget the habit of writing notes, congratulations and love letters by hand, and South Korean artist Kwang Yong Chan carefully collects paper witnesses of a bygone life and turns them into art objects. Paper figures evoke a lot of different associations, so Kwan Yong Chan's works are understandable even to those who are far from traditional Korean culture. It is possible to trace how the artist's works have evolved – over the years they have become more vivid and expressive. He went from classical art techniques to his own unique style, like many modern Korean artists ^[10].

Park Changyong's entire work is a deep, comprehensive study. The biennale "Mediacity Seoul 2014", which took place under his leadership, became a complex statement of the author, and its name – "Ghosts, spies, grandmothers" – accurately reflects the diverse range of his interests like nothing else.  Park Changyong is fascinated by the traditional, pre-Confucian beliefs of Koreans (the essence of which can be considered through the theme of ghosts and ghosts), the problem of the Cold War and the division of Korea into North and South (expressed in the image of a spy), as well as memory and oblivion in relation to recent national history (mediated by the living elderly and elderly people) ^{[5, p.75]}.

The projects "Black Box: Memories of the image of the Cold War" (1997) and "Scenery" (2000) reveal the theme of the division of the country. But he is not investigating the fact of separation itself, but the perception of this event and its reflection in the collective memory.

The Sindoan Project (2008) tells about the concentration of neotraditionalist and ethical religious communities based in the Keren Mountains during and after Japanese colonization. Park Changyong highlights unknown episodes of Korean modern history associated with deep, suppressed roots even at the time of the establishment of Confucianism ^{[5, pp.75-76]}. Today, in Korea, where Protestantism and Catholicism prevail, such pagan practices become entertainment for tourists, and the inhabitants of the country themselves treat them with disdain.  ^{[11, c.579]}.  At the same time, everyone ignores the fact that these mystical teachings are guided by the existing reality and have deep foundations for survival in crises. Park Changyong speaks of the national tradition as "failed", failed, drawing attention to the cultural self-alienation of Koreans. He points to the fact that the "East" tends to look culturally isolated, locally traditional in accordance with the expectations of the "West", thereby falling into self-orientalism ^{[5, pp.75-76]}.

The artist insists on searching for the true prerequisites and sources of traditions, and on ceasing to focus on Western culture as a source for inspiration and imitation. In his opinion, South Korea, like all other countries, has a unique historical experience, which can become a rich material for research activities ^{[5, p.77]}.

Korean artist Ham Gyeong has been working on the Embroidery project since 2008. His idea originated when she found a leaflet with the text of North Korean propaganda at her home in Seoul.

The essence of the project is to transfer embroidery images to North Korea through intermediaries, where this type of craft is at the highest level. First, Ham Gena draws on canvas, and then prints the drawing digitally. After the image is secretly transferred to North Korean craftsmen, they embroider it on fabric, and then return it in the same secret way through China. For embroidery, she chooses subjects that are significant, in her opinion: for example, the war in Iraq, the explosion of the atomic bomb, the reproduction of "Gioconda", thus transmitting information about events in the world to the performers of the order. In other words, the artist sends messages one way to an unknown addressee, guided by the desire to share the experience of knowledge with those who are deprived of direct access to world information reports. The artist does not know the authors of these works, but notes that more than 15 embroideries returned to her perfectly completed. "The colors that the artist sent in pastel colors come very bright. North Korean embroiderers use dark and saturated shades, not dull ones. They seem to like it" ^{[7, p. 554]}.

The very attempt at communication, overcoming distances and ideological barriers, and the process surrounding it — all these are works of art, according to Ham Gen. "Art is communication." Thus, an interesting communication process is formed: the artist delivers messages about our world to a closed country, and receives in response works (created in traditional technique) of high quality, which she then presents to everyone around the world.

The issues of feminism and the specifics of a woman's life in Korean culture are raised in Yoon Seongnam's works.  She touches on the themes of motherhood, the female share and the search for oneself as a person. Yoon Seongnam led a fairly ordinary life for a Korean woman, being a wife and mother, although she always wanted to become an artist.  The harsh post-war life in Korea forced her to give up her dream. By the age of 40, she began to think about who she was and what she really wanted to do in life. Thus began the search for her own identity. After receiving her second art education in the USA, she began working with wood, painting it with traditional paints and creating sculptural objects depicting female figures ^{[12, p.75]}.

In his mixed installation "Mother's Eyes Series" (1993), Yoon paints images of Korean women. The images on the pieces of trees are wrapped in traditional Korean natural fabrics with patterns (silk and okyangmok (cotton) to represent women dressed in hanbok (traditional women's dress). She intentionally includes Korean cultural motifs and patterns in her works to convey the representation of the female image, which translates the feminist political voice of the artist ^{[12, p.74]}

For Yun, art has become a form of feminist cultural activism. Through her work, she raises awareness of sociocultural ideological identity, class and gender issues affecting Korean women for a long time.

 Summing up, it can be noted that a number of modern South Korean artists create works of art based on their life experience, directly related to the traditions of their country. In their works, along with the expression of universal human problems, themes arise related to the search and reflection of cultural identity and self-identification. Today, many artists continue to insist on the need to create a “brand of Korean art” that has a connection with traditional aesthetics and worldview, because this is the only way to protect Korean art from being dissolved in the global world ^[13]. Some artists are looking for an answer in the art of old Korea and traditional aesthetics, weaving it into their modern works, others believe that it is possible to become relevant only by combining global and personal, and refuse to select methods of creating their work as truly "Korean". Sometimes they choose one form or motif for creativity (bottari, rolls of their Korean paper, traditional silk fabric), sometimes they raise issues of immigration or the life of women in traditional Korean society, but all of them in one way or another seek to express the cultural characteristics of their country. For various psychological and social reasons, artists tend to seek a deeper meaning in working with local cultural artifacts and these works are highly appreciated in the world of modern art.