siren eun young jung: Korean Artist Talk

siren eun young jung is a Seoul-based visual artist whose work explores the aesthetic and political possibilities of queer performativity, primarily through video and performance. She has received the 2013 Hermes Foundation Art Award, 2015 Sindoh Art Prize, and 2018 Korea Artist Prize and participated in the exhibition in the Korean Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale.

This talk will focus on jung's representative work and long-term research project, "Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project (2008-)". Yeoseong Gukgeuk was a new genre of performance that emerged in Korea's liberation era following its independence from Japanese colonization in 1945. This genre, characterized by gender-bending performances where only women performed on stage, combined elements of pansori-a traditional Korean performance art-with modernized and Westernized proscenium opera. It reached the peak of its popularity in the 1950s but lost prominence during the military dictatorship in the late 1960s when Korea sought to transform into a powerful modern nation-state.