Table Of ContentExpanding the Parameters
of Feminist Artivism
Edited by Gillian Hannum · Kyunghee Pyun
Expanding the Parameters of Feminist Artivism
Gillian Hannum • Kyunghee Pyun
Editors
Expanding the
Parameters of Feminist
Artivism
Editors
Gillian Hannum Kyunghee Pyun
Manhattanville College Fashion Institute of Technology
Purchase, NY, USA State University of New York
New York, NY, USA
ISBN 978-3-031-09377-7 ISBN 978-3-031-09378-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09378-4
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A
cknowledgments
This anthology has its roots in a panel presentation at the 109th Annual
Conference of the College Art Association, held virtually due to the
COVID-19 pandemic from February 10 to 13, 2021. Our session,
“Political Engagement of Women Artists: An International Perspective on
Status Negotiation,” brought together practicing artists and art historians
to consider how women artists from a variety of cultures, East and West,
or from the combined space resulting from relocation and immigration,
are utilizing their artistic practices to bring about social and political
change. The panel included papers by Soojung Hyun, Sandy Lane and Joo
Yeon Woo, Michelle Lim, and Deborah Saleeby-Mulligan; Sooran Choi
served as discussant. All but Lim, who had to suspend her work with a
group of artists in Myanmar due to the political situation in that country,
have expanded their papers into chapters for this book. We thank all of
them and Lim, the thoughtful audience members who attended our panel,
and the organizers of the conference, for encouraging us to start a book
project. Through our work together, we came to realize that there was a
need for an expanded understanding of “feminist” artivism—one that
would also include trans and non-binary artists and voices—and that exist-
ing volumes have continued to focus too exclusively on white artists from
North America and Europe. This encouraged us to cast a wide net as we
communicated with artists and scholars from around the world, inviting
their contributions. Gillian and Kyunghee are grateful to the contributors
who agreed to be part of this project and to be engaged in a productive
conversation during a rigorous review process. They also wish to give
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
special thanks to New York University student Heewon Yang for editorial
assistance, and Nick Hall for copy editing.
Gillian, who came of age in the early 1970s during the second wave of
feminism, benefitted from enrolling in the first Women’s Studies class
offered at her undergraduate institution, Principia College. As a graduate
student in art history at Pennsylvania State University, her mentor in pho-
tographic history, the late Heinz Henisch (1922–2006), encouraged her
research interest in women photographers. At Manhattanville College,
where she spent her teaching career, she introduced several courses on
photographic history, including one focused on women photographers.
She would like to thank her colleagues in art history at Manhattanville,
Megan Cifarelli, Lisa Rafanelli, and Deborah Saleeby-Mulligan, for their
encouragement and support, and Deborah for her essay in this anthology;
all have had long-standing research interests in issues surrounding gender.
She would also like to thank studio art colleague Randy Williams for intro-
ducing her to the work of photographer Ming Smith and for his reading
of and comments on her chapter. She also thanks Ming Smith and her
studio for her collaboration on the essay. Finally, she would like to thank
her husband, Randall Hannum, for both moral and technical support as
this project came to fruition.
Kyunghee acknowledges her professors who were second-wave feminist
activists. The late professor Linda Nochlin (1931–2017) was a major
influence on her and her colleagues who studied art history at the Institute
of Fine Arts in the late 1990s. Kyunghee was also privileged to work with
Professors Nancy Regalado and Evelyn Vitz in the Medieval and
Renaissance Programs at New York University. Professor Penelope
Johnson, who taught monastic history at New York University, was pivotal
for Kyunghee to learn methodologies of feminism. Kyunghee’s disserta-
tion advisor, Professor Jonathan J. G. Alexander, was an open-minded
intellectual who truly showed respect and support for feminist scholars,
having been part of the British Marxist intellectuals in the 1980s. It was
also during this period that Professor Carolyn Dinshaw and Professor
Mary Carruthers at New York University introduced innovative ways to
interpret medieval texts in the context of sexual desire and queerness.
Kyunghee thanks her students and colleagues who remained supportive
of her interest in women’s political engagement and her advocacy for an
inclusive community of women and gender non-conforming people in
creative industries. Kyunghee wrote a dissertation on illuminated manu-
scripts made for a Benedictine monastery in Saint-Denis, France. Although
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
this was a community of male monks, she has written on intersectionality
of dress, portraiture, and identity politics. She has focused on the study of
masculinity in medieval Europe and contemporary Asian-American art
communities for two decades. The recent political climate of the #MeToo
Movement and the sexist ideology of regulating women’s bodily auton-
omy generated much discussion in her own classes at the Fashion Institute
of Technology (FIT), where more than 90 percent of the student body are
women or gender non-conforming people.
KJ Prince Cunningham, sociologist at the Fashion Institute of Techno-
logy, gave valuable comments in the initial stage of this book project.
Jung-Whan Marc De Jong, Praveen Chaudhry, Souzeina Moushtaq,
Yasemin Selik Levine, Anna Blume, and Andrew Weinstein, all colleagues
at FIT, shared their views and thoughts on the development of feminist
scholarship in their respective fields. Most importantly, students from dif-
ferent national and ethnic backgrounds with a fluid sense of gender iden-
tity have inspired Kyunghee to look beyond academia and her own
ethnonational background as Korean. It was this powerful encounter with
people—authentic and alive—that drove Kyunghee to publish this book.
Kyunghee thanks the artists who engaged her in conversations on gender
and sexuality in unconventional formats: Mikyung Kim, a pioneering con-
ceptual artist; Debbie Han, a cosmopolitan artist of “goddesses”; and Kate
Hers Rhee, a provocative thinker-performance artist. Yong Soon Min
showed generosity by sharing her thoughts and concerns when it comes to
educating young people. Kyunghee acknowledges that contributing
authors in her other book, American Art from Asia: Artistic Praxis and
Theoretical Divergence, provided much needed updates on the literature in
fields encompassing both socially responsible contemporary art and femi-
nist activism.
Kyunghee also wishes to thank Gillian for providing a model of collegi-
ality and commitment to feminist art history. When Kyunghee was teach-
ing as a part-time instructor in Gillian’s department of art history at
Manhattanville College, Gillian—the department chair—showed an
example of solidarity by arranging for young instructors to teach at times
convenient for child care while she herself taught mostly in the early morn-
ings and evenings. It was also Gillian who encouraged Kyunghee and
Deborah Saleeby-Mulligan to collaborate further, creating the exhibition
Violated Bodies: New Languages for Justice and Humanity held at three
different venues throughout 2018. Those years were instrumental for all
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
of us to turn theoretical principles into lived experiences that impacted on
many people’s lives.
Finally, Kyunghee would like to thank her sons, Justin and Alex, and
her husband, Jin. Kyunghee and Justin were part of the Women’s March
in 2017, which prompted her to pursue the exhibition of Violated Bodies.
Both Justin and Alex constantly challenged Kyunghee to shatter rigid
thinking, conscious or subconscious, about gender stereotypes and ethnic
profiling, while Jin showed a model of shared governance of the house-
hold. Most importantly, Kyunghee honors her parents, who never set lim-
its on her education or intellectual aspirations.
c
ontents
Part I I ntroduction 1
Introduction: Artists for Political Engagement: A Table for
Women and Gender Non-conforming Artists 3
Kyunghee Pyun
Part II Countering Colonialism 27
Native Feminisms and Contemporary Art: Indigeneity,
Gender, and Diné Resurgence in the Work of Natani Notah
and Jolene Nenibah Yazzie 29
Elizabeth S. Hawley
Disrupting the Silence: Australian Aboriginal Art as a
Political Act 51
Fiona Foley
Part III Against the Establishment 65
Spanking Confucius: The Feminist Protest Art of Kang-ja Jung 67
Sooran Choi
ix
x CONTENTS
From Non-conformism to Feminisms: Russian Women Artists
from the 1970s to Today 87
Natalia Kolodzei
The Personal and the Political in Liminal Space: A
Conversation Between Sandy Lane and Joo Yeon Woo
Addressing Artivism in the Korean DMZ 109
Sandy Lane and Joo Yeon Woo
From South Africa to Afghanistan and America: An
Exploration of Female Street Artists and the Socially
Disruptive Nature of Their Work 129
Deborah Saleeby-Mulligan
Part IV Dislocation and Migration 143
Yong Soon Min’s Defining Moments: Gendered Space of
Decolonization in the Pacific 145
Soojung Hyun
Sited Nomadism from the Atlantic to West Africa: Addoley
Dzegede 167
Ila Nicole Sheren
Alterity in Europe—Occupying Spaces as Feminist Strategy
in (Post)Migration Aesthetics: A Conversation 185
Parastou Forouhar and Cathrine Bublatzky
Maria Jose Arjona, Into the Woods 205
Maria Jose Arjona and Jennifer Burris
Part V Race and Gender Identity 225
Blurring Lines/Breaking Barriers: Harlem and Beyond, the
Career of International Photographer Ming Smith 227
Gillian Hannum
