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How Do You Wear Your Body?: Lee Bul's Body Crafting
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How Do You Wear Your Body?: 이불의 몸 짓기

논문 기본 정보

Type
Academic journal
Author
Journal
Korean Association Of Art History Education Art History No.16 KCI Accredited Journals
Published
2002.8
Pages
165 - 189 (25page)

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How Do You Wear Your Body?: Lee Bul's Body Crafting
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In today’ s ever-changing world, we witness the human body emerging as one of the major areas subject to some very fundamental changes. The correlation between body and identity is nothing new to us, but in the midst of the ever-present fluctuation generated by the complexity of contemporary society, the female body is now facing an identity crisis as never before. As western culture has obsessively regarded the female body as a marker of her identity, the notion of deficiency and excessiveness accordingly became encoded in her identity. Such coding forced women to be categorized in the sphere of monsters rather than that of humans (this status is only attributable to ‘men’). For such reasons, the ‘technologization of identity’ becomes a doubly loaded challenge for women.
Among the contemporary artists who use their own bodies as the primary medium for art, Lee Bul deserves special attention. Her dynamic works take on a conceptual approach and are issue-based. Though the general themes related to the immortal body and death span throughout her artistic career, her works can largely be divided into two phases. While her early works, created before 1997, incorporate images of human-monsters and are demonstrated with a strong feminist stance, her post-1997 works of cyborg-monsters testify to her interest in the intervention of technology, and the feminist statements became somewhat reserved.
Lee’ s early works which deal with images of fetuses, pregnant women, and deformed or partial body parts demonstrate their formal affinity to the works by Hans Bellmer, Cindy Sherman, or Kusama Yayoi and Louise Bourgeois. Decorated with beads and sequins, these costume pieces, with their monstrous appearance, have numerous tentacles multiplied in a strange manner so that they reached a state of pseudo-human. Lee wore these pieces during her performances in rural Korea and in the metropolises of Japan. And in her monument series constructed with inflated balloons, the patriarchal colonialist perspective is parodied through the representation of diverse images of Asian women. In 1997, the artist gained international recognition through her decaying fish series. By introducing the element of smell to the system of representation, and by absurdly combining decaying fish with artificial sequins, the artist brought up the issues of cheap Korean female labor and the sacrifices of women. The element of decay in the fish series provides a logical connection to the artist’ s later works of cyborgs.
By voluntarily choosing to wear the image of a monster, which historically has been used to identify women, Lee intervenes and diffracts the patriarchal views of the male gaze. Her action is blasphemous in that it intentionally goes over the normative frames of representation and refuses to remain in a docile body conforming to the regulations of disciplinary powers to an extent of self-surveillance. Possessing contradictory features as excentric beauty and the grotesque, the monster is an object of sublime as well as abjection, and becomes an embodiment of superior power.
After exhibiting her fish work at MoMA, Lee moved away from the images of organic monsters and experiments with cyborg figures. The source of her inspiration turned toward Japanese cartoons and animation. The blue/red girlish cyborgs with incomplete arms and limbs in machine form, nevertheless share the basic compositional features of the traditional human statue. In White Cyborgs cast in polyurethane, the images of a princess and female heroine are combined. and indicate the influence ranging from art history to mass media. The latest version of Lee’ s cyborgs are horrible end-products of science and technology and these cosmic monsters are exemples of the ‘organs without bodies’. Despite being cyborgs, which is normally assumed to be sexually neutral, the works formally allure themselves to be sexually female, and even possess female names. The works are rooted in an extended critique of the patriarchy: male desire and its fantasy of women continue to exist even in cyberspace, dispersed through cyberpunk cultures.
The initial Noraebang(karaoke) work introduced after the cyborg projects is recently re-designed to take the shape of spaceship-like sports cars. The construction provides the viewers with a personal karaoke booth where they are welcome to sing their heart out. The video installations placed inside as well as near the structure explore the theme of space, gravity and the human body. The human body, which can never keep up with the speedy changes, suffers a state of constant abruption resulting in the inversion of space and time. The video display various images including high school girls with a Lolita complex, modern nomads who are dancing to the rhythms of a Filipino band at a hotel lounge, and urban scenes shot from elevated expressway passes.
Since Donna Haraway published her “Cyborg Manifesto:” cyborgs have become a central figure in the post-gender world deconstructing the notions of gendered dichotomy. However, despite its metaphorical usefulness, the practical effectiveness of Haraway’ s cyborg has always remained in question. Rather than sharing Haraway’ s optimism, Lee’ s cyborg embodies a critical view on the gender discrimination prevalent in cyberspace. Compared to her early monsters, Lee’ s later mechanical cyborgs incorporated the norm of representation and the fantastic monsters take on a milder tone of voice, and this is not irrelevant to the artist’ s moderated position regarding feminism.
#이불 #사이보그 #사이버페미니즘

Contents

1. 들어가며
2. 여성과 몸
3. How Do You Wear Your Body?
4. 이불의 몸
5. 열린 길 앞에서
Abstract

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