Art-Kut! The Counter-Cultural and Feminist Spirituality of Shamanism in Postwar South Korean Art

Abstract

Abstract On 17 January 1981, during a cold Winter Day at the height of an authoritarian military regime, a group of South Korean artists named “ Baggat Misul [Outdoor Art]” gathered around a riverbank outside Seoul to interact with nature and called it “ jayeon misul [nature art].” A young woman artist Yong-sin Suh performed an act the group called “a lark,” during which Suh alternated with two male artists in reading aloud sections of newspaper articles. These unhinged, free-spirited acts were inspired by the Korean folk theater tradition of pansori (traditional Korean musical opera), and kut (traditional Korean shamanistic exorcism). Korean shamanism by way of the mudang kut rituals has historically been a Korean indigenous belief intertwined with Buddhism and Taoism and stood as a counterforce to the mainstream nationalist neo-Confucian and imperial Christian conservative legacy that oppressed women and the nonconforming gender-neutral community in South Korea. The paper analyzes the Korean shamanistic elements that were utilized in performative, conceptual, and nature art practices by South Korean artists in the post- WWII period to the present, within the framework of the intersection of Korean feminism, art activism, and shamanistic spirituality.