If you’ve been intrigued by the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s new exhibition, “The Shape of Time: Korean Art After 1989,” Thursday is the day to go. Meet at Mia is a free event, and if you sign up for a membership, you’ll be able to see the exhibition for free. And yes, there’s a free membership option, with the next level up being $60 for the year.
The exhibition is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where it ran from October of 2023 to February of this year. Hyunsoo Woo, a deputy director for collections and exhibitions at PMA, said the museum had originally pitched Mia during the pandemic about bringing the show here. “I think sometime last year, they reached out to us about the possibility of bringing the show,” she told me at a preview event last month. “I said ‘Oh my God, that’s fantastic.’ I was really happy.”
Woo curated “The Shape of Time” with Elisabeth Agro, a curator for American Modern and Contemporary Crafts and Decorative arts at PMA. “The Shape of Time truly has been a labor of love for us,” Woo said.
According to Woo, it’s the first time in 15 years the subject matter covered in the exhibition has been presented in a North American museum, and the second time it’s been presented by a North American museum ever.
It focuses on a generation of artists that were born between 1960 and 1986, who came of age as South Korea moved from an authoritarian government into a democratic rule. The works grapple with history, political changes, the reality of the country’s proximity to North Korea, globalization, socio-political themes and cultural memory.
“This exhibition offers an extremely rare opportunity to explore the vibrant contemporary art scene created by 25 artists of Korean descent,” Woo said at the media preview.
Outside of the galleries, Sunkoo Yuh’s giant “Monument for Parents” piece, made in 2013 speaks to the experience of living with two identities. A Korean-American born in South Korea, the artist layers cultural memory stacked in a kind of totem.
Inside, the curators begin the exhibition with Gwangju Uprising, featuring a series of inkjet prints by NOH Suntag called “Forgetting Machines” (2005-present). After a coup d’état in 1979, university students protesting were beaten, killed and raped by the South Korean military, resulting in citizen from the South Korean city of Gwangju taking up arms, leading to the deaths, injuries or disappearances of 4,634 people.
Suntag has photographed existing portraits from the tombs of people who were killed in the massacre, capturing the decay that has taken place on the physical photographs. Along with each photograph, the artist marks the date and writes how each of them died or disappeared.
In 1987, after growing pressure, the president declared there would be direct elections for the president and restoration of civil rights. A year later, the country hosted the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, and joined the United Nations in 1989.
Woo was born in South Korea, and moved to the United States in 1996. Before that, she experienced Korea during an era of great change. Her father had fled from North Korea when he was 14 to escape military service and he never saw his family again. Woo remembers watching “Popeye” cartoons and “I Love Lucy” as a kid. That cultural influence can be seen in the exhibition as well.
American Pop culture makes a notable appearance in the exhibition in a series of paintings by Donghyun Son of Michael Jackson made in 2008. The works reference Korean iconography, including a red throne for the paintings depicting Jackson in 1989, when he was declared the King of Pop.
The journey of the exhibition moves through South Korea’s evolution as a democratic country since 1989. From digital photography that documents a vista overlooking the demilitarized zone between South Korea to North Korea, to work that explores South Korea’s relationship to the rest of the world and it’s own cultural trajectory, there’s a lot to unpack.
In OH Jaewoo’s “Let’s Do Gymnastics!” (2011), the artists shares a single-channel video replicating young people performing the Korean National Stretch Anthem, required of all school children between 1977 and 1999. Mesmerizing and surreal, the work reflects on the beauty of the precise movements, but also emphasizes the way the practices enacted a kind of social control.
The exhibition features South Korean artists as well as Korean-American artists. There’s just one piece that incorporates contributions by North Korean people, who are not named. In Kyungah Ham’s “What you see is the unseen / Chandeliers for Five Cities SK 01-06,” (2018-2019), the artist has collaborated with North Korean artisans through intermediaries— often businessmen or North Korean ex-pats who were able to move in and out of the country. The intermediaries would bring Ham’s designs to the crafters, who would then stitch the intricate works. Of the 10 designs sent out, 8 were completed over a 13-year period, Woo told me.
While there may not be any North Korean artists in the show, North Korea’s presence looms throughout the gallery rooms.
“The Shape of Time: Korean Art after 1989” runs through June 23, 2024 at the Minneapolis Institute of Art ($20). More information here. “Meet at Mia: Shape of Time” takes place Thursday, April 4 from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. (free). More information here.
Reimagining Native/American Art
If you do make it to Mia, I’d recommend you also check out “Reimagining Native/American Art,” which runs through May 27. It was curated by two Mia curators in collaboration with a group of artists, scholars and community members that incorporated feedback from Indigenous visitors. The two curators that worked on the exhibition were Jill Ahlberg Yohe, associate curator of Native American Art and Robert Cozzolino, curator of paintings at the museum who was fired earlier this year. You can read about what led up to that firing here, and the aftermath here.
I won’t get into all of it here, but suffice to say there’s been quite a bit of controversy. Essentially, it strikes me that one of the key issues amidst the fallout comes to the direction and approach a museum should take.
“Reimagining Native/American Art” embodies a rather radical approach to curation, one that employs consensus and engagement as a tool for curation. Much like the seminal “Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists,” presented in 2019, and also curated by Ahlberg Yohe along with Teri Greeves, “Reimagining Native/American Art” was developed in partnership with scholars and Native artists and thinkers. Among the group was Andrea Carlson, Jordan Poorman Cocker, Bridget R. Cooks, Dakota Hoska, and Darlene St. Clair, with additional contributions by Gwen Westerman and Šišóka Dúta.
In some ways, the exhibition functions in a similar way as the land acknowledgments you sometimes hear at the beginning of events and other places— but taking that to the next level. It uses Native principals to ground the first two rooms in reference to the Twin Cities and Minnesota as a place, featuring art works by both Native and non-Native artists, both living and historical. Then it moves into concepts of relationality, followed by works that question what a future could look like.
I really liked the mix of Native and non-Native American artworks, allowing the viewer to think about American art in relation to Native art in a way that’s different from what’s often presented. Black artists and other artists of color also fit into this landscape. I loved seeing Minnesota artists like Dyani White Hawk, Wanda Gág, and Leslie Barlow all in the same context. There’s a still life by 19th century artist Raphaelle Peale, wonderful examples of craft works, and contemporary re-imaginings of Native art forms like “Waterfall” (1993) by Ho-Chunk artist Truman Lowe and the gorgeous 2019 piece “Floral Legacy” by Dakota artist Holly Young. Some of my other favorites in the show were George Morrison, Wing Young Huie, and Piotr Szynalski.
The exhibition does have a place to offer comments and share your thoughts about the exhibition, which the signage says the museum will use to plan future programming. I think it doesn’t hurt to contribute what you think.
“Reimagining Native/American Art” runs through May 27 at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. More information here.
Sheila Regan
Sheila Regan is a Twin Cities-based arts journalist. She writes MinnPost’s twice-weekly Artscape column. She can be reached at sregan@minnpost.com.
