Masters of Disguise: Masquerade in Contemporary Korean Portrait Photography

Online Lecture by Hyewon Yi, Ph.D 

Director of Amelie A. Wallace Gallery and Lecturer of Art History at SUNY College at Old Westbury

Wednesday, September 29, 2021 

Presented by the Korean Cultural Center New York and AHL Foundation 

Online Lecture is available on KCCNY Youtube Channel at 12:00pm on September 29th.

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[2021 Online Public Lecture] Episode 1 - Masters of Disguise

This lecture introduces four Korean photographers whose practices revolve around masquerading in self-portraits—Nikki S. Lee, Chan-Hyo Bae, Jung S Kim, and Youngho Kang. 

All born between 1969 and 1975, these artists questioned hybridization of cultures in the age of globalization. Using masquerade to explore their individual personas, they design props, costumes, make-up, and hairdos to create staged images. Lee, Bae, and Kim developed their projects while living in the West, where being confronted with diverse cultures brought awareness of their status as Korean immigrants, especially at a time when identity politics was in full swing in the art worlds of New York and London. They rely on subtext—subcultures for Lee; fairytales for Bae, Kim, and Kang—for their performative projects. Fluidity and artificiality, as manifested by their ever-changing appearances, draw attention to the superficiality of biological and cultural markers. By blurring the boundaries of gender (all four, but especially Bae and Kim) and race (Lee, Bae, and Kang), these artists challenge and destabilize conventional notions of culture, race, and gender as determinants of personal identity.

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