Asian Women Artists Take Center Stage in Sprawling Seoul Exhibition

Standing in front of the entrance to the exhibition “Connecting Bodies: Asian Women Artists” at a high-ceiling basement gallery of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Seoul, I felt a spark of exhilaration that jolted me. Finally, an exhibition dedicated to Asian women artists! But why has it taken so long?

Perhaps it was worth the wait, as the historical context gives the show a lot more weight. Featuring around 130 works by some 60 Asian women artists from 11 countries and territories across East, South, and Southeast Asia—Korea, Japan, China, Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and India—”Connecting Bodies” surveys works from the 1960s, when women’s art began to emerge in the region, through today.

Certainly, names such as Yayoi Kusama, Yoko Ono, Lee Bul, and Cao Fei are no strangers to the global art world today. But what about those in-between, and those who have not been receiving the same level of exposure internationally or even regionally? How are they different? Do they share a common ground?

An ambitious and expansive exhibition like this offers a great opportunity to examine these artists and their practices while reflecting on the transformation experienced over the past six decades. This period, coincidentally, corresponds to the sexagenary cycle that forms the foundation of the lunisolar calendar that is still widely used in many parts of Asia. In a way, the opening of this exhibition signifies the return to the starting point of this 60-year cycle, an appropriate time to review and contextualize the rich materials from the past to present.

Going through the exhibition occupying two galleries located on the museum’s basement level, it was not hard to notice the theme of “bodies” on display, quite literally. From the image of Korean artist Jung Kangja’s iconic performance The Transparent Balloons and Nude (1968), the country’s first known female nude performance that saw the artist covering her naked body with transparent balloons, to Philippine artist Agnes Arellano’s surrealist sculpture Carcass Cornucopia (1987), which depicts the body of a woman with horse feet hung upside down, with her torso ripped apart revealing a baby sitting inside, and the charming video work Dance with Farm Workers (2001) by Chinese artist Wen Hui, bodies are not just part of a work, but also a conduit and a point of convergence.

Works selected for this project live up to the expectations outlined by Bae Myungji, MMCA’s curator who also curated this ambitious show, which “focuses on the values of communication, connection, and solidarity associated with the body.” It explores works “through the lens of corporeality,” the curator said. “The body is a place where various ideologies and situations intersect, and it also represents a locus where one can explore the existential possibilities of difference and diversity.”

Rather than organizing works in chronological order and categorizing works and artists by region, the show is made up of six thematic sections, with each featuring a selection of works to echo the respective theme, each punctuated by bold works and rarely seen pieces.

Section one, titled “Choreograph Life,” highlights works responding to socio-political conditions through women’s bodily experiences, addressing the changing roles of women. Included in the section are Japanese artist Mako Idemitsu’s video works Woman’s House (1972) and Another Day of Housewife (1977), Korean artist Ryu Jun Hwa’s politically-charged paintings Red Flesh (1992) and The Fall of America (1992), and the late Filipino artist Brenda Fajardo’s whimsical commentaries on migrant workers from her country depicted in Tarot Card Series, her works on paper comprised of Pilipina, Entertainer in Japan (1993), Pilipina, Domestic Helper in Hong Kong (1993), and Pilipina, Not Documented in Taiwan (1993).

“Flexible Territories of Sexuality,” which the museum says is not suitable for those aged under 19, is filled with provocative works that challenge the social norms of sexuality, a topic traditionally considered as a taboo across many parts of Asia. Women’s body plays a key role in many pieces on show, such as Japanese artist Shigeko Kubota’s 1965 performance Vagina Painting, where the artist is seen crouching on the floor, painting with a brush held between her legs, depicted in a black and white photograph. Quirky narrative video pieces Love Condition and Love Condition II by Mai Endo x Aya Momose exploring sex, love, and more were delightful to watch. Kusama’s 1967 avant-garde video piece Self Obliteration can also be found here.

Chinese artist Guo Fengyi’s drawings from late 1990s to 2000s referencing the intersections between humans and beings of a higher realm set the tone for “Bodies · God(desse)s · Cosmology.” Paintings by artists such as Pacita Abad from the Philippines, Kim Insoon from Korea, and Fitriani Dwi Kurniasih from Indonesia explore femininity borrowing images from folklores and mythologies.

“Street Performances” is a collage of rare documentation of important performances by women artists from past to present. The show concludes with “Bodies as Becoming–Connecting Bodies,” dedicated to works that transcend the rigid boundaries and hierarchies that have long marginalized women. Among the highlights are Thai artist Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s video work The Class (2005) and Korean artist Kim Nahee’s newly commissioned illustration and video installation piece Gossip Girl Protocol (2024).

Does this presentation structure work? It is without a doubt a mountainous effort to sift through the materials and to identify overarching narrative threads to connect all the dots. After all, besides the fact that these are all women artists and their art emerged throughout the chaotic post-colonial eras and struggle with various degrees of democratization, they are all rooted in places with vastly different cultural, historical, and geopolitical contexts. Generalizing them as one will simply be factually incorrect.

While the categorization may be arbitrary at times, it was a worthwhile experiment as it creates solidarity among the artists on view, though it may be confusing to those who are not well-versed in the region’s contexts and aesthetics.

The configuration of space was problematic in some instances. For example, in the section “Flexible Territories of Sexuality,” there was an impression of an uneven allocation of space where some works that needed more space were cramped in a room while others were left surrounded with slightly too much emptiness. Nevertheless, confining Taiwanese artist Joyce Ho’s mesmerizing five-channel video installation Vera x Diary (2023) in one room as part of section five’s “Repeating Gestures–Bodies · Objects · Language” was an interesting move. Watching the performer trying to hide herself some weird corners of an apartment made it very difficult to walk away from that room.

“Connecting Bodies” is nonetheless an important show, despite its flaws, and I carried the 400-page exhibition catalog all the way from Seoul to London knowing that it is a reference I want to keep on my book shelf. Perhaps this show is merely the beginning of a new chapter.

In November, Taipei Fine Arts Museum also opened a show focusing on female artists titled “Enclave: An Autobiography.” I sincerely hope that exhibitions showcasing and contextualizing works by women artists from Asia and their diaspora are not just fashion that comes and goes. The show “presents works that have attempted to encourage a reconfiguration of power through women’s language,” Bae noted. Indeed we need more shows and platforms to give Asian women artists their long overdue recognition and tell the stories they did not have the chance to tell.

“Connecting Bodies: Asian Women Artists” runs through March 3, 2025 at National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea.

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