Korean Women and Feminism

            Kimsooja’s identity as a Korean woman is undeniably crucial to her art. She grew up in a conservative society dominated by Confucianism. In traditional Korean society, women were mostly confined to the home. Women were required to learn Confucian virtues at a young age. These virtues of endurance and subordination would prepare them for their futures as mothers and wives. They were primarily denied the opportunity to participate in events or activities outside their homes. In the late 1940s came national liberation, but also release for Korean women. Previously under colonial rule by the Japanese, a Western democratic system developed in Korea that gave the population, especially women, greater freedom, and opportunities. Although the 50s brought many significant changes for women in Korea, the 1960s and the stress of economic growth in an industrial society proved to backpedal, with the exploitation of young and unmarried women by low wages. The conditions of employment were inferior to those of men. However, the importance of education increased, and Kimsooja benefited from it.[154]

Born in 1957, Kimsooja would have experienced all these pivotal stages for post-war Korean women as adolescents.[155] By the mid-1970s, Kimsooja was in her late teens and still receiving an education in Seoul, a metropolitan city where women’s studies programs were introduced to universities. Women’s groups were created all over Korea, covering diverse fields, attending international conferences, organizing assemblies, passing laws, and fighting for equal and improved rights. By the 1980s, feminism began to advance into the arts, with women artists, such as Kimsooja, exploring the reality of oppressed women.[156] Although Korea has achieved notable economic growth during the past four decades, the progress in improving the status of women has come to a standstill and is much less impressive. Confucian social rules, such as sexual discrimination against women, dominated every aspect of women’s lives until 1948, when the Republic of Korea was created. Discrimination in most fields, such as social and economic, has mostly lessened, but the country and its treatment of women was certainly not fixed. In 1996, the number of women in policy-making positions was still minimal, and in 2009, the unemployment rate of women in higher academic careers was high. Women still worked lower-wage jobs and were subject to wage or employment discrimination. It is mainly because of the stereotyped and insistent concepts based on Confucianism and the traditional sex roles that came along with it.[157] It is unsurprising that Needle Woman is a critique of women in society going unnoticed, as they did in Korea for centuries. The woman herself is woven into whichever culture she stands in. She forms the material and the fabric’s structure but is overlooked. She blends in and isn’t regarded as anything more than a woman in a simple dress standing on a road, not contributing to society. She both sews together and breaks the social fabric.

      Korean women artists of Kimsooja’s generation were very protective of the female body. The Needle Womaninterprets her choice of presence to the Korean society that she grew up with. Kimsooja actively uses her own body more powerfully and physically. She transforms her body into an icon by concealing her identity (not revealing her face and wearing a simple robe). She detaches her being from the physical body and makes the body a void icon, or a portal. This also allows her viewers, whoever and of whichever gender identity they may be, to step into her own body and see what she is seeing, but it also protects her privacy. Her body is still her body because her identity is protected. She complicates the layers of interpretation and gaze by protecting her identity. Although she does not act to invite strangers touching her or physically interact with her, I would say this is a risk she takes being exposed to the outdoors in a very public setting. She puts herself and her body in the most vulnerable place she can: the middle of the street in a foreign and potentially dangerous city, and as a woman most of all. This speaks to the medium of performance and endurance art, as discussed previously. Progressive women artists used their bodies to perform their art. The bodily resistance required to perform such work is evidence enough of the feminist values of the Needle Woman.

 The endurance of gaze was paramount to completing this work, as well as the endurance of the body itself.Endurance art focuses on hardship, pain, and the passage of time. However, even after long deliberation about the inclusion of long durational performances and the creation of its definition, “Endurance Art” has never been a movement. Although Kimsooja’s Needle Woman requires a certain level of endurance, the solitude, and exhaustion of durational pieces, such as Tehching Hsieh’s One Year Performance, where he sat in a cage for a year, is more fitting to this category.[158] We might refer to Kimsooja’s Needle Woman as endurance art because of the more metaphorical meaning of the endurance of gaze.

Drawing connections between Kimsooja’s performance and other female artists performances of the late twentieth century is valuable for comparison. Needle Woman can be compared to Yoko Ono’s performance Cut Piece from 1964 (Fig. 32) or Marina Abramovic’s Rhythm 0 from 1974 (Fig. 33). Where Ono and Abramovic both either stand or sit and ask the audience to interact with how little or much they want with the body in front of them, Kimsooja is much more subtle. Ono and Abramovic objectify their bodies completely for their performances. They are the object, especially Abramovic.[159] Kimsooja detaches her being, avoids giving herself up completely. She uses only the language of her silent and unidentifiable body to convey her message. She willingly gives no scissors, objects, or cameras to her audience. But in some ways, she’s in a much less controlled environment. There is greater uncertainty about Kimsooja’s performance because it is completely exposed to public. Ono and Abramovic were within the security of art institutions, indoors, and surrounded by participants who were aware of the performance. They were also invited to participate in the performance in different ways. There were no instructions sent out to the greater Tokyo metropolitan area explaining the woman standing in the middle of one of their streets that day. Kimsooja was exposed entirely and risked the performance at her own devices, but she still protects herself. This is the protection and strength of her generation as a Korean woman and artist. Kimsooja’s work is different from these artists’ works by nature. Ono and Abramovic engaged with the participating audience with their own body, but Kimsooja seems to play a leading role, asking the audience to become her, to see what she sees. The point is no longer a test of human nature but something else.