Statues, paintings, and masks—like the bodies of shamans and spirit mediums—give material form and presence to otherwise invisible entities, and sometimes these objects are understood to be enlivened. Dr. Laurel Kendall explores how magical images are expected to work with the shamans and spirit mediums in contemporary South Korea and compares the use of these shamanic images with similar practices in Vietnam, Myanmar, and Bali. The question of empowered images concerns not only what they are expected to do but how they are fabricated, marketed, cared for, disposed of, and sometimes transformed into art-market commodities and museum artifacts.
Sacred Images and Magical Things
Thursday, May 6, 2021 | 6 PM EDT
The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Laurel Kendall is Curator of Asian Ethnographic Collections at the American Museum of Natural History and Senior Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University. A scholar of popular religion and its material manifestations in East and Southeast Asia, Dr. Kendall began her long acquaintance with South Korean life in 1970 as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer, when a chance encounter with female shamans led her to subsequent anthropological field work. Her latest book is Mediums and Magical Things: Statues, Paintings, and Masks in Asia Places (University of California Press, 2021).
