Happy Souls and Anxious Mourners:

Details: Category: Gallery

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), University of London

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

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.

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