Unlike the concept of “observing other self from oneself” by Lao-tzu (chapter 54), the “Body: Glimpses of the nature of mind” is the curator’s concept invented to indicate a “body” phenomenon observed in the artworks of these three female artists—Lee Young-mi, Liu Bing and Haruna Sato.
This “body” phenomenon is actually relevant to the artists’ imagination of “East Asia” society in the past two decades. Given that all these three artists are female, who come from Korea, China and Japan respectively, and that they grew up in the 1970s and 1980s when China, Japan and Korea were developing and changing economically, socially and culturally at a high speed, therefore, their artistic creation inevitably displays the image function in a sociological sense. In other words, the art image happens to be the depiction of artists’ mind and nature” under their own cultural contexts in the social upheaval.
“Body: Glimpses of the nature of mind” means that artists’ imaginations about the body in different cultural contexts are getting similar or rewriting the definition of “culture” and “nation” because of the consumerism and globalization in the last two decades despite their different intentions of visual expression due to their own cultural traditions and characters. In the synchronized time and space, the fragmentation and sense of crossing of culture is becoming a trend. In fact, it becomes less and less important where artists are working now, whether in Tokyo, Beijing or Seoul.
On the contrary, it’s their reflection and expression of humankind’s common situation or problems based on human “nature and mind” that are becoming increasingly prominent. Hence, compared with the purification and deep exploration of form and style by the artists in the period of modernism, current artists, especially like, Liu Bing and Haruna Sato who have the experience of different cultures and grow up in the wave of globalization and consumption, provide a development space for the real expression of personal “mind and nature” through their ability of integrating the cultural fragments and experience of crossing freely.
Just as Michelle Foucault has said, “The present era may be a space era; we are in an era of simultaneity, an era of side-by-side, an era of distance, an era of co-existence, an era of spreading.” During this so-called post-modern cultural transformation, the body, the cultural landscape, is highlighted again, that is the possibility of desire for “body as a subject” is reaffirmed by the artists again. The desire and the technology concerned construct the body itself, and pure perception becomes a focus of body aesthetics.
In the artworks of these three artists, namely, Lee Young-mi, Liu Bing and Haruna Sato, their shaping and imagination of “body” is not only the individual experience of the body transformation in this post-modern context but also the cultural “monologue” of Chinese, Japanese and Korean cultural differences and social upheaval. Interestingly, when they resort to the medium of “body”, they may have no intention of constructing a cultural consensus of “East Asia”, but they show a realistic view about “East Asia” in the body imagination. The expression and concept springing from the body differ from the sociological images and event statements of other artists since “Body: Glimpses of the nature of mind”, namely, the inner contemplation through the body, attaches most importance to the individual nature of mind for the body expression. Body is not a carrier of culture or society, and instead body is body. The construct or imagination of the culture with body ultimately still rests on the artists’ “nature of mind” and personal experience, though this “nature of mind” and personal experience inevitably get entwined in the real social situation and cultural traditions in China, Japan and Korea.
Courtesy of Shun Art Gallery
