Wednesday, May 28, 2008 at 6:30 PM

The Korea Society

950 Third Avenue @ 57th Street, Eighth Floor

Panelists:
Joshua Bernard, editor, CollectionDX.com
Eric Nakamura, publisher, Giant Robot Magazine
Joanne Rudis, design director, Fisher Price/Mattel
Seho Kim, creative director, The Korea Society

$10 (members) and $15 (non-members)

Buy tickets online or RSVP to (212)759-7525, ext. 355 email.

Upcoming Exhibition

May 29-August 15, 2008
10:00 AM–5:00 PM, Monday through Friday
Open to the Public and Free of Charge

Opening Reception: Thursday, May 29 at 5:30 PM
Open to the Public and Free

Exhibition Venue
The Korea Society Gallery
950 Third Avenue, Eighth Floor, New York City
(Building entrance on SW corner of Third Avenue and 57th Street)

Panelists: CYJO (photographer/artist)
Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis)
Lok Siu (Professor of Anthropology and Asian/Pacific American studies at New York University)

Moderator: Alexandra Chang (Events Coordinator at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute of New York University)

Kyopo (교포): A person of Korean descent who lives, or who has lived the majority of his or her life, outside of Korea.

The Kyopo Project-a collection of 171 photographic and literary portraits of kyopo created by photographer/artist CYJO-is an intriguing record of the global kyopo community. Settled in places as geographically and culturally different as the United States, Denmark and Brazil, The Kyopo Project's subjects are the faces of global trends towards transculturalism and transnationalism. The exhibition explores traditional notions of identity and challenges the meaning of being Korean.

"Being a kyopo is being part of a tribe, for we are tied together by our experience, race, culture and ethnicity in a specific way. Indeed, the individuals who appear in CYJO's project represent the complex and random inter-weavings of this tribe. It is a visual and textual expression of an organic web of relational connections that bloomed into more than two hundred subjects," says Marie Myung-Ok Lee, a novelist and visiting lecturer at Brown University.

Asian Diasporas: New Conceptions, New Formations, a collection of essays co-edited by Rhacel Salazar Parreñas and Lok Siu, will be available for purchase at The Korea Society during the exhibition.

http://chelseanow.com/cn_54/fromonenycapartment.html

http://www.koreamjournal.com/Magazine/index.php/kj/2007/december/artists_trax

The Korea Society Gallery

Exhibition Dates and Time: 
January 31 - April 18, 2008
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM, Monday through Friday

Open to the Public and Free of Charge

Location:
The Korea Society, 950 Third Avenue, Eighth Floor, New York City
(Building entrance on SW corner of Third Avenue and 57th Street)

Toys - always more meaningful than the simple playthings they appear to be-can embody the fantasies, values, obsessions and anxieties of a generation. Toy Stories: Souvenirs from Korean Childhood includes a veritable toy box of over 90 flamboyantly colored action figures, robots, miniature tanks and paper dolls from 1970s and 1980s Korea.

Korean Funerary Figures:
Companions for the Journey to the Other World

Exhibition at The Korea Society Gallery

July 26, 2007 - December 18, 2007 Extended!
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM, Tuesday through Friday

Open to the Public and Free of Charge

Location
The Korea Society, 950 Third Avenue, Eighth Floor, New York City
(Building entrance on SW corner of Third Avenue and 57th Street)

• "... eye-catching." - New York Times Art Review,
  "Korea’s Extraordinary Send-Offs for Ordinary People", August 17, 2007 link
• "... the artifacts... are truly treasures." - Japan Times Review,
  "Little Friends for the Other World", October 11, 2007 link

Upcoming Gallery Talk
Happy Souls and Anxious Mourners:
The Uses of Funeral Figures in Pre-Modern Korea

with
Charlotte Horlyck
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London

November 6, 2007 at 6:30 PM 
When a member of the community dies, ritual helps to ease the pain of the living. In early Korea, where no effort was spared to ensure the satisfaction of the soul of the deceased, ritual also helped ease the pain of the departed soul. Throughout their history, Koreans employed a variety of highly crafted artifacts in their funeral rites in order to assuage and cheer the spirits of the dead. Professor of Korean art history Charlotte Horlyck will talk about the use of funeral figures in pre-modern Korea and how they reflect Koreans' changing interpretation of life, death and their own place in the cosmos.

About the Presenter
Charlotte Horlyck is an assistant professor of Korean art history in the Department of Art and Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). She formerly curated the Korean collection at London's Victoria and Albert Museum and continues to act as an advisor to museums in Europe and the United States. The author of numerous articles on Korean art and culture, Horlyck's current research explores how social, religious and economic changes are manifested in Koryǒ-period Korean funerary remains.

For more information or to register for  any of the above programs, contact Jinyoung Kim, senior program officer for arts, at (212) 759-7525, ext. 316 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . You may fax your reply to (212) 759-7530.

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Death is an aspect of the human condition that touches every culture in every age, and almost all cultures envelop death in a rich artistry as a way of managing the trauma it causes. In nineteenth and early twentieth century Korea, artisans carved joyful wooden figurines depicting acrobats, clowns and mystical animals-which are called kkoktu-to place on the funeral biers of the departed. A collection of 72 kkoktu will be brought to the U.S., for the first time ever, for an exhibition in The Korea Society Gallery. Organized jointly with the Seoul-based Ockrang Cultural Foundation, Korean Funerary Figures: Companions for the Journey to the Other World will run at The Korea Society Gallery from July 26 to November 20, 2007.

The kkoktu are archaeological treasures in their own right. Their costumes and poses reflect the realities of rural Korean village life during a period that left few written records. More importantly, the kkoktu open a window on a timeless, characteristically Korean attitude towards death. Though the gaiety depicted in many of the figurines may seem incompatible with mourning, what they are intended to express is a deep desire that the deceased loved one will enter the next world surrounded by joy. The figurines also embody a sophisticated appreciation of the fleeting nature of all experience.