박이소의 ‘마이너 인저리(1985~1989)’ 연구

Abstract

This article explores the Minor Injury gallery of Yiso Bahc, also known as Bahc Mo in his New York years, from 1982 to 1994. Working as a director of this space, Bahc organized not only exhibitions but also political, art-based panel discussions, performances and books events. In the face of the commercialized aspects of New York art works and the mainstreaming of Soho-based alternative spaces into museum exhibitions, Bahc was drawn to provide a space for “minority” artists, from underdeveloped countries and origins. The space was open to independent curators and artists as well as local communities, promoting specific community-based art projects. Minor Injury can be called an alternative space, but in a strict sense, Bhac was positioning the identity of this gallery as more provocative and political—an “alternative” to alternative spaces in Manhattan.BR First, this article constructs a list of exhibitions that were held at this gallery, based on archival research as well as interviewing participating artists. In the absence of concrete archival materials, the study uses available published materials such as press release, reviews, postcards, and so on. The works of Yong Soon Min, Ikjoong Kang, Shirin Neshat, Kyong Park, Sangnam Lee and others were shown in group exhibitions at this gallery. The early works of Jimmie Durham and Maria Thereza Alves were also exhibited. Ego Art, Anti Ego, Super Ego, Trans Ego Art and others were curated by Bahc at this time in the form of open calls, while the artist was also actively exhibiting his own works at Art in General in New York, The Bronx Museum of Art and the 1994 Havana Biennale. Second, this essay also examines the way Bahc Yiso strives to build his own vocabularies by analyzing his work Rice Mural on Tilted Arc, Bahc’s anti-monumental rice mural proposal, as Tilted Arc as a public art project was being debated harshly in the New York art world. It also discusses Bahc’s Speaking American, his show at the Bronx Museum in 1990 and How to Hold Chopsticks, installed at Hudson River Museum in 1992, both of which deal with Bahc’s struggles to define the awareness and awkwardness of being marginalized as a Korean in New York.