YUN SukNam

“As if a shaman were dancing, the agony, rooted in the lost mind and the processes of the desire to erase oneself, was materialized through painting, and naturally appeared as a desire to tell the whole story. This is my feminism.”*

As this statement from Yun indicates, her feminist art is a kind of a ritual which sublimates her complex as a woman through art. The ritual is an operation of summoning the existence of the female and the language derived from the existence. It is a process that manifests the female sex by speaking as a woman and by speaking of women. Yun, through this process, does not merely verify the existence, but moreover reveals another mode of existence of the other sex, and suggests another way of telling a story.

In other words the process of proposing an “alternative aesthetics” different from the mainstream has been the very footsteps of Yun Suknam as an artist. This path originated from the experience of life as a woman, and the gist of that experience lies in motherhood. Through the mother who lives within the artist—through “experiential motherhood” rather than motherhood as a social system—Yun Suknam discovers the power of healing. It is discovering the opportunity to transcend the modern idea of the self which centers around individuality, through a mother who bears her child inside her womb; through motherhood which reserves room for the other in itself. This is a point at which Yun shares a common idea with other feminists. For Yun, motherhood is a subject that encompasses others or discovers others within the artist, and moreover the starting point of recovery of the self in which the self voluntarily becomes the other. It is perhaps the biggest virtue required for every human being in order to achieve the ethical dimension of existence beyond biological sex.

In this way, Yun Suknam’s work originates from the structures of life, and is a realism and an art of practice in which meaning is revealed through the concrete effects on the life. Her work uncovers the innate properties of feminist art. Her artistic path encompasses various dimensions of feminism from practical movements to production of artwork and theory, and the content and formality of the artwork traverse a wide spectrum of feminist art. More than anything, her work, which is an in-progress art full of various possibilities, indicates the essence of feminism as an “open process.” Yun’s approach recalls the words of one women’s studies scholar that feminism cannot be defined intuitively; that feminism has to be newly defined and created through constant efforts of women themselves.**

Excerpted from Yun Nanjie, Professor of History of Art at Ewha Womans University

*Kim Hye-soon, Yun Suknam(Interview), “Gushing Tears from Wistful Totems”, 『To be lengthened』, ’, Ilmin Museum of Art, 2003 (Exhibition Catalogue), p.24.

**Jo Hye-jung, “Maternity, History, and self-statement of women”,『The Eyes of Mother』, Kumho Art Museum, 1993(Exhibition Catalogue), pp. 6-7.