Hope blooms eternal
A new exhibition by award-winning South Korean artist Oh Myung Hee sheds light on the female experience following the Korean War, with a title inspired by Marilyn Monroe
From Oscar-winner Parasite to the phenomenon that is K-pop, and the Netflix smash Squid Game, the past decade has seen South Korean culture rocketing into the public consciousness. No more can the tiny northeast Asian country of South Korean be described as “a shrimp between two whales”, overshadowed by China and Japan; the South Korean economy is now the tenth-biggest in the world.
In light of this, in autumn 2021, the Oxford English Dictionary included the word <hallyu>, meaning ‘Korean wave’, for the first time. And South Korea’s latest cultural export, K-art, looks to have the same impact on galleries across the globe: this September, Frieze launches a Seoul fair, the Victoria & Albert Museum is exhibiting ‘Hallyu! The Korean Wave’, and the South Korean art market transactions are expected to exceed 1 trillion won (US$820m) this year alone.
K-art typically references the country’s traditions and history; a defining feature is the use of historical Korean motifs and themes, from Confucian ideas to traditional ink-brush painting and calligraphy, combined with a modern take. Even Seoul’s street art regularly references the Korean War.
Notable contemporary artists include Haegue Yung, with her conceptual sculptures and video-art, ‘scent artist’ Anicka Yi, who employs everything from ants to saliva in her work – and Oh Myung Hee, a graduate of Sejong University and an Honorary Professor of College of Art & Design, at Suwon University, South Korea, who is bringing her affecting ruminations of the Korean female experience to the forthcoming Venice Biennale.
Showing at this year’s Personal Structures exhibition in Palazzo Mora, Venice, Myung Hee’s The Days were Snowy but Warm employs an artistic technique called ‘hwajo’ – traditional images of blossoms and birds, to represent femininity – along with old family photographs to illustrate the country’s relationship with the Korean War. After the War, the country was impoverished and starving. Yet for the women of Korea, it would usher in an era of personal liberation.
In The Days were Snowy but Warm she travels through family stories, via Westernisation, Korean traditionalism and pop culture – notably a 1953 visit to US troops stationed in Korea by Hollywood superstar Marilyn Monroe; the title of the exhibition paraphrases a Monroe interview quote, in which she described her performance in front of 17000 American soldiers as "It was snowing but I felt warm".
The visit, during her honeymoon with Joe DiMaggio, was courageous by Western standards, and became a catalyst for the women of Korea. Annoyed more fans turned out to see her instead of him in Japan, the baseball player refused to join her in Korea, and they divorced later that year.
In choosing to pursue her own road, she inspired many Korean women to pursue their own dreams and be who they wanted to be. And The Days were Snowy but Warm challenges a historical ‘narrative of sorrow’ surrounding Korean women, and considers how we must look back to move forward, living and transforming in one unbroken chain of experience.
“My works speak of a collective memory,” says Muyung Hee. “My generation did not directly experience war; nevertheless, we share the pain of our mothers and grandmothers who bore the scars of war… Just as in life, my works aim to communicate the message that though we face pain, conflict and innumerable difficulties, spring comes around again, and just like flowers blooms, so does hope and warmth.”
The Days were Snowy but Warm is showing at the sixth biennial contemporary art exhibition, Personal Structures, in Venice from 23 April to 27 November 2022