Spirit of Art in Flame

Ssamzi Space in Changjeon-dong, Mapo, Seoul will host a recollection of female artist Cha Hak-kyung (1951-1982) from Sep. 5 through Oct. 26. Cha is relatively less known here in Korea, but is a widely-recognized feminist and post-modernist artist.

She was the second Korean who had an exhibition in the Whitney Art Museum in New York, and her epic novel titled ‘DICTEE’ was used as a textbook for literature majors at UC Berkley in the U.S.

Cha, born in Busan in 1951, moved to Hawaii in 1963 with her family, and settled down in San Francisco the following year. Having majored comparative literature in UC Berkley, she began to expand her world of art into photography, film, theater play, performance and journalism. After moving to New York in 1980, she worked for the design division at the Metropolitan Art Museum.

Working passionately as a young artist, she was then brutally raped and murdered by a superintendent of a building where her photographer husband had an office. She was only 31 years old.

The exhibition entitled ‘Dream of the Audience’ will introduce Cha`s sprawling world of art, which deals mostly with the memory of separation and the loss of languages, via exhibitions, symposiums and theater plays.

The recollection of the late Korean organized by Constance Rewallen, chief curator at UC Berkley Museum, had already been held at five art museums in the U.S., and this is the sixth.

Some 40 items on display, which include video materials and films such as ‘Aveugle Voix,’ installations, artist books, drawings and slides, are from the Berkley Museum and the Cha Hak-gyung Memorial Center. Uncompleted film ‘White Dust from Mongolia’ will also be at the show.

A symposium called `Understanding Cha Hak-gyung` will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Sept. 5, attended by a number of artists including writers and pianists. Later at 7:30 p.m., Theater Muitos will perform DICTEE on stage.

Nunbit is set to publish a collection of Cha Hak-gyung after the show. For further inquiry, call 02-3142-1693.

Mun-Myung Huh angelhuh@donga.com