Young Feminist Artists’ Narratives: Artist Sang-hoon Moon
Sang-hoon Moon, “Sense of Touch”, Single-channel video, 6m 58s, 2019    
Editor’s note: In 2020, a number of young feminists have not only expressed various feminist topics through art but have also endeavored to engender a community of equality by raising issues such as sexual violence, discrimination, and hierarchy in the art industry among many others. We can now document a new narrative of feminist artists who communicate with society through ‘individual yet collective’ creation. This series is sponsored by the Korea Foundation for Women’s Grants for Gender Equality and Women’s Rights.
 
My dear friend,
 
We had an exhibition opening yesterday. The weather was particularly nice that day, and a lot of our old classmates were participating in the exhibition, so we all went to grab a drink afterwards. Sitting outside a dried pollack restaurant in Seochon, we started to catch up on each other’s lives over a few beers.
 
As always, a hodgepodge of complaints that mixed boasting with self-pity started our conversation. But without any of us noticing, we started to talk about those who we had lost touch with. It is pretty common to lose track of one another after graduation, especially when your school encourages a career-oriented mindset. I was not particularly interested nor surprised until your name came up.
 
I do not know if you remember, but I remember the day I first saw you. It was during the exhibition period at the end of my third year in college. I was hosting a small exhibition of my drawings from that year in a corner of the first-floor corridor. The corner was hard to notice even when passing by. I never expected anyone to come, but I saw someone sitting by my drawings. It was you.
 
You leaned into the small corner to see my work. It must have been a while because my legs started to fall asleep as I squatted and waited nearby. You finally stood up, and I do not know if it was my orthostatic hypotension acting up, but I swear I saw stars surrounding your silhouette when I stood up with you. I still do not understand why I saw the stars, but it certainly brought me a great deal of joy and strength to know that someone truly appreciated my work.
 
To be honest with you, I thought you were a little strange before I got to know you. When everyone was busy trying to leave good impressions on famous artists and swinging by their exhibitions, you never showed up, yet you were often talked about—but you never paid attention to rumors. I always had trouble understanding you. My colleagues told me you were “rude and careless”. A “headstrong” student who openly resented professors who encouraged her to “meet a guy and try dating”. A person who always put a damper on things. That was who you were.
 
The ones who criticized you made sure to isolate those who did not agree with their said “principles”. A lot of people made sure to fit their standards; to not to be excluded from the group. Looking back, I do not understand where those “principles” came from. They were probably just a frame to keep people from deviating from their established rules. As one of those people living inside that frame, I must have doubted you and your principles. It took me a long time to realize that they were able to manipulate the rumors in return for their role as “frame managers”. You were only fighting to not be another pawn in their game. You kept your distance to avoid being consumed by their false logic and to stop empowering the system. I did not know it back then, but that must have been the reason why you shone so brightly.
 
A panorama of We Will Always Dissent, Sang-hoon Moon’s solo exhibition held in Dec. 2019 at Keep In Touch Seoul    
Looking back, we were living in the dark ages. We went to school and entered the working world during the period when Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-Hye were in power [2008-2016] and there was a cultural and artistic blacklist. Some were oppressed, while others were tolerated under the name of freedom of expression. Do you remember that day in our art class when another student brought in a picture, taken from above, of several women’s thighs? Even though we were openly uncomfortable with the work, people, including the lecturer, discussed the work and its aesthetics for over an hour. You eventually stormed out of the room.
 
You returned after the break, carrying a picture that depicted a narrative of same-sex lovers. Rather than talking about the work itself, the class started to discuss their views of homosexuality and asked heavily fetishizing questions about lesbians. You remained silent. The lecturer also suggested that we talk about the work without adopting an erotic gaze. Nobody in that room understood that eroticism was the most important thing to the photo. The discussion contained only superficial comments and ignorant silence. Your presentation came to an end after 10 minutes.
 
I usually take these things in stride, but it was hard to let that day go. At such moments, we are forced to recognize that we are seen not as people but as women. Whether we want to or not, we face moments of inequality that have been passed down from generations of women but have been left out of history. Because we share our history, we share each other’s sorrow and grief. So sometimes, depression swallowed me whole after such classes. What made you walk away from the work you love and fall into inaction was not a specific person but the era itself, I cannot help but think.
 
Nevertheless, I remember you always making something at the studio. Sometimes, I wished I was part of your work. I must have liked your art a lot. I still cannot quite grasp the idea of you leaving art behind, especially when those who spent more time undermining their peers than reflecting on art are now holding dozens of exhibitions at big galleries. Why couldn’t those opportunities have come to you? Some artists are still holding exhibitions despite receiving terrible reviews for their last exhibitions just a few months prior
 
I had my first solo exhibition last year. I was around the age that you were when I last saw you. Even though I had participated in other exhibitions, I had never been able to display my work at a fancy gallery before. Looking back, I am not satisfied with how the exhibition went. But how can one be perfect from their first try? What is truly important is how we go forward; but I’m not so sure if I will have any more opportunities to ‘go forward’.
 
I think I now finally understand some of the things you said. You said showing your work includes creating a space and a context, and so art is not something you can master in one day. After exhibitions, you always felt a little regretful about the parts that you could have done better. I also remember you saying that even when you were busy preparing works for the exhibition, you were having a harder time taking care of other issues that come with the event itself.
 
Remember the day you had been helping out with an exhibition at that famous museum? I came by with four-for-10,000-won beers and we were just complaining about our days as usual.  I have to admit I was a little jealous of you.  I dismissed your words as petty complaints; I should have listened to you. I am sorry. I cannot stop thinking that you started distancing yourself from art from that day on. That curator who bombarded you with meaningful gestures and looks while making empty promises about your art career. I should have paid attention. I could say there were no such things as hashtags, Twitter, or Instagram back then, but that would be just shameful excuses. I was just too cowardly and narrow-minded to support you and stand by your side. I am sorry.
 
The conversations we had that day come back to me from time to time and I wonder how long you had to endure those lonely fights. Now that I finally realize your pain, I would ask you so many things if I could go back in time. What words did you hold back as you watched me be full of ungrounded confidence and faith? Were your smiles signs of fatigue from my overflowing ego or an act of kindness for a younger friend? Or, did you hold back your words of advice and distress because you thought my generation’s experiences would be different from yours?
 
Sang-hoon Moon, “Hand, Genitals”, Collaboration with variety photographer, Print on tracing paper, 2019    
I have since graduated and started working. I started working in an office because I needed money, but also because, after graduation, I finally faced that harsh reality—the reality you always had to deal with—for the first time. I chose work over art to run away from that reality. I kept complaining about the injustice in the art world to everyone around me, yet I did not try to work with art again. I spent quite some time feeling sorry for myself. When I was about to give up on this lonely journey, my friend introduced me to a group of feminist friends who were angry with the world for their own reasons. Unlike me, who spent most of her time stuck in self-pity, they were putting their thoughts into action and raising their voices. They were changing the world little by little through solidarity.
 
A lot happened that year. One day, I got a call from a friend to play basketball. Before I knew it, I was part of a basketball team. As I was running up and down the court, blocking passes and getting rebounds, I realized that I had been purposefully avoiding competition. Why did sports become exclusive to boys? Sports teach you how to balance ambition and compassion in competition. I had to back away from so many moments in my life because I did not know the simple method of how to navigate healthy competition.
 
Later, I made friends who do drag and I even lived as a drag king called “John Johnson”. As a drag performer, I was able to abandon my innate idolized masculinity and escape the hopelessness and frustration that came from thinking I would never be able to change my identity.
 
I have learned a lot from my feminist peers. I have learned how to pace myself, how to escape self-hatred, how to stop self-pity, how to engage in healthy competition, and how to practice self-care. Being with my friends and learning from them every day, I think I am finally leaving the nightmares behind and healing my wounds.
 
Come to think of it, I think I was always looking for my peers. They may be those who are with me now, but they may also be anonymous groups of people whom I have not yet met but can stand in solidarity with. I am empowered by those who voice their principles from wherever they are. I do not have nightmares anymore about classes where nobody takes my side. On the contrary, I now need to be extra careful with my work because there are so many people interested in queer-feminist narratives. I constantly need to educate myself and check for mistakes.
 
A few days ago, I was telling my friends how nice it would be to combine eggs and only give birth to girls. One of my friends pointed out, “We won’t know the child’s gender until they figure out their identity”. I again realized I have a long way to go until I fully understand and embody the complex nature of queer feminism. You once told me that you could not talk about what you wanted to talk about because you always had to start with the very basics when you talked about queer issues. Now, you do not have to start with the basics anymore. There are people who actively seek out those issues. We are no longer facing a mountain too steep to climb, and we have to give it a real try on this fairer ground. We cannot blame the era anymore.
 
My dear friend, you once lamented about the absence of lesbian writers in Korea after our feminist art class. Maybe we just did not know they existed. Perhaps we were trapped in our own art world and did not venture out to other fields. Like the history of queer human rights, lesbian art is being crafted by many activists. We were not aware of such a genre because we only went to famous exhibitions, galleries in famous art schools, and read mainstream art magazines.
 
Even when I came across such art at the Queer Culture Festival[Seoul Queer Culture Festival is the largest annual LGBTQ+ festival that aims to raise awareness of LGBTQ+ rights through parades, films, and art. The festival began in 2000 and is usually held in late May or early June], I may have unintentionally diminished it by calling it an amateur’s work. Little did I know, many activists have majored in art or are writers using pseudonyms. They raised their voices and proudly shared their messages through progressive art. Last year, I finally held an exhibition titled “Lesbian!” to share their work with the wider public. I printed out 400 leaflets introducing the exhibition, and they were all gone by its 10th day. That was how popular the exhibition was. We need to support queer artists and activists, to make sure their work is shared and remembered.
 
A panorama of the exhibition “Lesbian!” held in Outhouse, a gallery in Mapo-gu, Seoul in 2019. (Photo: Sang-hoon Moon)    
Thankfully, the world seems to be a little brighter now compared to the past. People are not silent anymore when teachers talk about their female students’ panties and blame the students for their own behaviors. My friend, I was able to host “Lesbian!” thanks to my queer-feminist friends, my peers, professors and colleagues who supported me, and those who made differences to this world.
 
Thanks to the people who actively fought against the system, I have the power and motivation to continue my work. They changed the art world and those changes gave me an opportunity to host my exhibition. People who come to my exhibitions motivate me just like how you did back on that day you showed up at my empty exhibition in the first-floor corridor. I am not going to blame society anymore, and I am going to keep making art. Just as you gave me strength back then, I hope that you see this story and that it gives you strength, wherever you are.
 
I think of you whenever I want to talk about these things. What are you up to? Where are you right now? Even though I do not know your whereabouts, I know that you are still making a difference somewhere. You shone brighter than anyone I have ever met. If you receive this letter, I want you to know that there are a lot of people who will support you and will endorse your beliefs. Join me and join us. I miss you and your work.
 
- From S, May 2020,
 
※ The friend character in this letter is fictional, but the letter is based on what the writer has heard, seen, and experienced in the art world. [Published: 1, 2020. Translated by April Park]
 
Original article: http://ildaro.com/8745
 
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