The Forgotten Legacy of the Minjung Art Movement in South Korea
with Soyang Park
Post-Doctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University

Thursday, May 24 at 6:30 PM

The 1980s were a turbulent period in South Korean politics, with society rebelling against the military government and demanding democratic reform. But the pro-democracy movement wasn't limited to politics. South Korea in the 1980s also saw the rise of the minjung (grassroots) movement in the arts.

Throughout the decade, and into the early ‘90s, leading minjung artists worked around the theme of han (a uniquely Korean sense of lingering grievance) to create pieces which critically examined deep, often unpleasant, cultural realities and echoed the political calls for change.

 At a powerful gallery talk, Soyang Park, a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for the Arts in Society at Carnegie Mellon University, will explore the minjung movement and the accomplishments of its leading artists, such as Lim Ok Sang and Oh Yoon, as they materialized the ghosts of contemporary Korean society.