Connecting Bodies: Asian Women Artists: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea (Seoul B1, Gallery 5,B1, Gallery 6)

Connecting Bodies: Asian Women Artists attempts a new examination of the contemporary meaning of post-1960s art by Asian women from the perspective of 'corporeality.' It was developed as part of an Asian art project by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), which has carried out comparative research and exhibitions on Asian contemporary art beyond national borders. The body is a place where various ideologies and situations intersect, and it is also a locus that reveals difference and diversity. This exhibition assembles around 130 works by women artists from 11 Asian countries to explore this theme.

This exhibition consists of six sections: "Choreograph Life," "Flexible Territories of Sexuality," "Bodies God(desse)s - Cosmology," "Street Performances," "Repeating Gestures-Bodies - Objects - Language," and "Bodies as Becoming-Connecting Bodies." Through them, it shares stories about diverse, polyphonous bodies that have redefined identity through various meanings. This aspect also relates to the exhibition's aim of going beyond the perspective that views Asian women as 'others' vis-a-vis the Westerner or male and focusing on them instead as agents embodied in multilayered ways. At the same time, Connecting Bodies focuses on works that have questioned modernity while revealing the experiences of cultural otherness that have been applied to the body in the geographical and political space of Asia, as a setting where ideologies of nation-states, patriarchy, capitalism, and nationalism have been reproduced.

The exhibition also turns its attention to long-existing aspects of women's culture, which has sought to understand thought/sensation and art/life in integrated ways. In this way, it attempts to discover artistic possibilities for encouraging 'connections' with those beyond us. At a historical moment when social sustainability is in doubt and a reappraisal of values is fundamentally needed, the feminist perspective-transcending binary divisions of subject/object, culture/nature, and male/female-can perhaps help us imagine an alternative world that embraces and connects a broader scope of being and identity.

Artists: Agnes ARELLANO, Aki SASAMOTO, Amanda HENG, Arahmaiani, Araya RASDJARMREARNSOOK,Atsuko TANAKA, Bharti KHER, Brenda FAJARDO, CAO Fei, CHANG jia, CHOI Jae-eun, CHUNG Chanseung, JUNG Kangja, and KANG Kukjin, Eisa JOCSON. Fitriani Dwi KURNIASIH (Fitri DK), Fluxus, GUO Fengyi, HA Minsu, HE Chengyao, HONG LEE Hyunsook, I Gusti Ayu Kadek MURNIASIH, Imelda Cajipe Endaya, IPGIM, JANG Pa, JOG Myong-Duck, Joyce HO, JUNG Jungyeob, JUNG Kangja, KIM Insoon, KIM Nahee, Kiyoji OTSUJI, LEE Bul, LEE Eunsil, LEE Mire, LEE Soon-Jong, Mai ENDO x Aya MOMOSE, Mako IDEMITSU, Mariko MORI, Melati SURYODARMO, Melia JAARSMA, MIN Yong Soon, Al-An DESOUZA, Mitsuko TABE, Mrinalini MUKHERJEE, Nadiah BAMADHAJ, NAM Hwayeon, OH Kyung Hwa, Pacita ABAD, PARK Youngsook, Pinaree SANPITAK, RYU Jun Hwa, Shigeko KUBOTA, siren eun young jung x KIRARA, Tari ITO, Thao Nguyen PHAN, Theresa Hak Kyung CHA, TONG Wenmin, WEN Hui, WU Mali, XIAO Lu, Yayoi KUSAMA, YEE I-Lann, YEOM Jihye, YIN Xiuzhen, Yoko ONO, YUN Suknam