Borders and Belonging: Visions of Relationality and Community by Contemporary Korean Artists in Australasia

Abstract

Current prevailing art historical narratives continue to constrain the interpretation of works by overseas artists of Korean heritage, narrowly fixating on national identity and essentialist categories. This thesis challenges normative categorisations such as 'Korean-Australian' or 'Korean-New Zealand' which often fail to capture the complexity and fluidity of identity and artistic practices. It explores the artistic practices of contemporary Korean artists currently based in Australasia, with a particular focus on the practices of Lisa Myeong-Joo, Haji Oh, and Yona Lee. This research uncovers the artists' intricate negotiations of diasporic citizenship, ethno-nationalism and their intellectual explorations of belonging, mobility, and migration. It pays close attention to artists' own visions of themselves as global actors.

By proposing an expanded application of Hijoo Son and Jooyeon Rhee's methodology of the micro, meso, and macro, I argue for an art historical framework that seriously considers artists' positions and expressions in the broader world beyond the 'local' and the 'nation-state'. Son and Rhee's micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis attend to the nuances and differing historical circumstances that inform the creation, production, and reception of artworks without forcing differences into a false or monolithic homogeneity. A balanced consideration of all three levels allows for the critical analysis of the works of artists who speak back to ideas of Korean-ness but at the same time eschew them all together. This tripartite model generates interpretations that assess the artists' personal lived experiences that are in turn shaped by broader social, economic, cultural, and historical forces. Opposed to the logic of the binary of the 'global' and the 'local,' this thesis asserts that only by appreciating the singularity of the granular and its role in the wider tapestry of global meta-narratives are we able to fully grasp the complexity of global art histories.

The discussion begins with an analysis of the artists' re-negotiation of geographical and historical paradigms paying particular attention to the tropes of cartography, historiography, and archival material that are manipulated to produce conscious un-belonging and de-territorialisation. As overseas artists contend with nationalist exclusion, they not only expose the lacunae of nationalist, institutionalised history and geography but participate in creating their own subjective spaces and personal archives through memory. By doing so, they prove that their experiences in Korea at a micro level are simply an entry point into their practices. Rather than visualising place as static, tangible, or geographically bound, the artists in this thesis operate via a productive mode of refusal to be situated in a single place altogether. This is an important point to make in contradistinction to studies that continue to focus on the elements of 'Korean' history, culture and politics in the works of overseas Korean artists, omitting the fact that the micro is part of the meso and macro.

I argue that from their disparate migratory journeys and experiences of varied forms of alienation and domination, overseas Korean artists speak back to nationalist conceptions of communities and belonging by forging their own subjective structures of belonging. I propose that one method of resisting conventional notions of community is through the concept of a 'transnational sorority,' as theorised by Naoki Sakai and Hyon Joo Yoo. Through the potential for building a transnational sorority that challenges traditional gendered practices, I espouse a feminist methodology as a means to explore alternative forms of belonging outside the nation-state.

The thesis reimagines the concept of belonging in the global art world, calling for a broader and more inclusive perspective that acknowledges the artists' claims and contributions to world-building and building the world. Show more