Diasporic Art and Why it Matters in Korea

Koreans living abroad are often said to live “in diaspora,” a term originally used to refer to the Jewish communities scattered across Europe and the Middle East. Today’s lecture will explore ways in which overseas Koreans use artistic activities to express their sense of selfhood and configure their identity. The speaker will especially discuss a number of exhibitions, includingthe 2002 Kwangju Biennial’s There Project and the 2004 Korean Diaspora and Art Symposium held in Tokyo.  The There exhibition brought together twenty-four artists from Brazil, China, Japan, Kazahkstan, and the U.S. while the exhibition in Tokyo presented artwork, performance, and multi-media installations by thirteen artists; the Tokyo event was in part organized as a response to the dissatisfaction with There.  The two showcased a scale of identities and tensions produced in the attempt to understand the Korean diaspora, especially in relation to the historical understanding that views Korean migrants and migration history as hierarchical in nature, with ethnic oneness and pure-blood relations.  

Diasporic art is produced by artists residing outside a homeland.  One key to Korean diasporic art is the way in which its artists explore a shared history of displacement, presenting historical memoriesreconstructed affectively and re-imagined nostalgically. The visual arts, in particular, provide a means of examining the Korean diaspora. The lecture will explore the complex position and history of Koreans in diaspora, expressed in artistic ways that engage with the local communities residing abroad, a Korean audience that is still insistent upon connections to homeland, as the Kwangju and Tokyo exhibitions reveal.  The study of these diasporic artists sheds light on multiple forms of Korean identity, that often resist dominant narratives of the nation and reflect differing experiences of class, gender, of global and national politics, and of particular local situations.

Hijoo Son grew up in the United States. After completing her BA at the University of Chicago in Modern East Asian History, with a thesis on Korean Comfort Women, she moved to the University of California, Los Angeles, where she received her MA in Asian Languages and Cultures, specializing in Pre-Modern East Asian History. She remained there for her PhD (2009) in Modern Korean History and Culture, her dissertation was titled “Casting Diaspora: Cultural Production and Korean Identity Construction.” Since 2010 she has been an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of History, Sogang University, where she is helping to create an undergraduate program in Korean Studies to be taught in English.

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