The Individual as a Site of Modernity and the Transnational Webs of Modern Art

What is it about?

This article is a short introduction to "Modern and Contemporary Korean Art: Continuity and Transformation," a special issue of Art in Translation. By focusing on the complexities of individual artists who had dissimilar senses of the self, time, and space in the global web of modernisms, the introduction aims to rethink the macro-and master- narratives of modern Korean art that generalize the ethnic or national character of Korean art.

Featured Image

Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash

Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This special issue emphasizes the individual as the site of modernity to demonstrate how six artists dealt with crucial issues of modernity through their art-making practices and how their political position, gender, nationality, mobility, and colonial/diasporic experiences in Japan, France, Soviet Russia, and Korea dismantled the canonical reading of modern/contemporary Korean art.

Perspectives