Rethinking the 20th-Century Korean Embroidery from Gender Perspectives

Abstract

The rupture in the history of Korean embroidery is generally perceived as a severance from the traditional embroidery, made due to the Japanese colonial rule. However, it cannot be denied that the narrative of modern and contemporary Korean art history, mainly constructed around artistic movements and groups, also played a major part. The dispute encompasses the fundamental question of whether embroidery can be seen as a form of fine art from the perspective of modernist aesthetics, and the matter of hierarchy between different crafts. Also inherent are the tensions between contradictory values such as tradition and modernity, Western or Japanese and Eastern or Korean, abstract and figurative, and others peculiar to Korea, and the effects of such binary oppositions are closely related to gender problems. This paper re-examines, from gender perspectives, the chronological history of embroidery since the late 19th century, which had been placed on the periphery of Korean art history until now. In the traditional society, embroidery was produced and enjoyed privately, but moved into the public sphere through education and exhibitions for women during modernization. In the process, in order to be recognized as a form of pure art, embroidery gave up its unique characteristics as craft and took on the formative language of paintings. In the years immediately after liberation from Japanese colonial rule, which was the era of eradication of Japanese influences, establishment of national identity, and industrialization, embroidery was divided into abstract embroidery understood as more masculine, and traditional embroidery considered more feminine. Korean embroidery artists in the 20<sup>th</sup> century, as women experiencing particular historical contexts, worked with confidence in the artistic value of embroidery due to or despite their specific circumstances.