"Reactivating Tradition: Art, Activism, and Democracy in South Korea," Sohl Lee '06

In the 1970s and 1980s, dissident artists associated with South Korea's minjung (people's) art movement rejected both state-sponsored modernism and imported Cold War formalism. Yet their opposition to authoritarian rule did not entail a rejection of tradition. Instead, they turned to precolonial vernacular practices—Buddhist traditions, communal performance, and ritual forms—as critical resources for political expression. Drawing on The Minjung Art Movement: Decolonization and Democracy in South Korea, this lecture demonstrates that these artists did not simply revive tradition but strategically reactivated it. By transforming inherited visual and performative practices into collective forms of artistic activism, they repaired historical ruptures produced by colonialism and the Cold War while imagining democracy as an ongoing cultural practice rather than a merely political institution.

Through protest banners (kolgae kurim), murals, prints, and performance, the talk explores how artists redefined the relationship between art, democracy, and cultural sovereignty. It also reflects on how activist art enters museums and art history, asking what histories of protest become visible—and what remains at stake—when social movements are remembered through collections, exhibitions, and scholarship.

Sohl Lee '06 is Associate Professor of Art History at Stony Brook University (SUNY), where she specializes in modern and contemporary Asian art, decolonial visual culture, socially engaged art, and ecological art history. She received her B.A. in Art History and International Relations, cum laude, from Smith College and her Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester. Her first book, The Minjung Art Movement: Decolonization and Democracy in South Korea (Duke University Press, 2026), offers the first comprehensive art historical account of South Korea's influential movement of activist art during the 1970s and 1980s. Her current book project, "Seaweed as Method: Art History with Oceans, Multispecies Life, and Empire," examines the global visual cultures of seaweeds through the intertwined lenses of ecology, decolonization, food sovereignty, and Indigenous onto-epistemologies. Lee is the recipient of the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching (2020) and has received fellowships and grants from the Social Science Research Council, the Korea Foundation, the Korean Ministry of Culture, the Academy of Korean Studies, the Getty Research Institute, and the Andy Warhol Foundation. She currently serves on the Smith College Museum of Art Visiting Committee (2023–2029).

This event is supported by the Maxine and Sigmund Kunstadter Lecture Fund. Co-sponsored by the Department of Art, Department of East Asian Languages & Culture, and the Smith College Museum of Art.