MFA Fine Arts presents a talk by art historian Sohl Lee titled “Art and Democracy: Korea circa 1987.” Lee will discuss a new horizon of aesthetics and politics that opened in South Korea during the 1980s pro-democracy social movement. Throughout the postwar period, Korean artists spoke of a collective desire to engage with social reality. And it was in the 1980s that the nation experienced an explosion of a wide range of artistic practice: from woodblock print workshops to large protest banners and funerary portraits on the streets. The year 1987 marked a tipping point for both the social movement and what is now known as “minjung art” (or “people’s art”), as nation-wide protests ultimately forced the military dictator to renounce the presidential seat. Covering the years preceding and following this democratic transition driven by the people’s will, this talk will show how visual objects shaped the organizational logic of public dissent in South Korea, and what happens to their political significance when they travel to New York City—which they did in 1988, when this city was undergoing its own politico-cultural transformation.

Sohl Lee is an assistant professor in the Department of Art History and Criticism at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook. Her research and teaching focus on modern and contemporary art in East Asia, postcolonial theories, histories of the avant-garde and globalization. Her book project tentatively titled Reimagining Democracy: Minjung Art and the Cultural Movement in South Korea traces the multifaceted process in which a particular aesthetics of politics, and politics of aesthetics, emerged during the country’s democratization. She is recipient of grants from the Social Studies Research Council, the Korea Foundation, the Arts Council Korea, the Association of Asian Studies, the College Art Association, and the Susan B. Anthony Institute, among others. Her publications have appeared in Yishu: Journal for Contemporary Chinese Art, Art Journal, and Journal of Korean Studies and InVisible Culture, and she edited Being Political Popular: South Korean Art at the Intersection of Popular Culture and Democracy, 1980-2010 (2012).

Talk

Sohl Lee

Room 101C