The Politics of Curating Contemporary Korean Art for

Audience Abroad

by Young Min Moon

Journal BOL, no. 10, winter 2008

Published by Insa Art Space of Arts Council Korea

Abstract:

This essay, commissioned by the organizing committee of 2008

Gwangju Biennale, is based on my email interviews with

various curators and artists active outside of South Korea who

have organized or hosted exhibitions of contemporary South

Korean art for audience abroad. My questions pertain not only

to their curatorial approaches but also possibilities, limitations,

and politics of organizing an exhibition based on race and

nation-state, and exploration of what might be some forms of

alternative curatorial strategies.

My queries boil down to the following: from the perspective of

the foreign audience, the question is whether it would be

possible to truly understand the culture of the Other; for

Korean artists and curators, they would be concerned with the

question of what kinds of communicative contexts would be

appropriate for the unknown audience and how their stories

might be told. In addition to these questions, there are many

other difficult questions and paradoxes to be dealt with when

introducing the art of one nation to another nation. The essay

questions if there still remains necessity in organizing

exhibitions based on nation-state, what may be reasons for

doing so despite the difficulties inherent in such practice, and

explores some effective examples of alternative curatorial

strategies.

The essay will be included in an upcoming anthology of

contemporary Asian art from MIT Press in 2010 (Melissa Chiu &

Benjamin Genocchio, editors).