Fragments and Borders: (re)constructing South Korean identity through patchwork

本作品通过韩国女性的拼凑文化，记录和恢复被忽视的女性家务劳动故事，探索大韩民国（Korea， 1948年至今）的（重新）建构。在20世纪70年代，与韩国文化遗产政策的制度改革相一致，关于这种拼凑工艺品的书面历史开始激增。这些叙述重申了节俭坚韧和建设性极简主义的品质，以线性轨迹将这些布料追溯到朝鲜王朝（1392-1910），在那里，它们被认为是被遗忘和不为人知的女性的代表性声音。此外，线性历史有助于加强在一段时间内寻求区分民族认同与朝鲜民主主义人民共和国（DPRK，朝鲜）的共产主义政权的真正的“韩国性”的概念。这个项目通过运用女权主义、后殖民和去殖民的方法，探索韩国女性拼凑文化的复调视角，来解决线性和真实性的问题。使用一个将后殖民主义定位于本土化和跨国韩国历史的框架，必须考虑到日本殖民主义时期（1910-1945）和美国帝国主义时期（1945年至今），传统形式的迭代，现代改编，散居的解释和身体表现，揭示了韩国女性的多样性和复杂性，超越了真实和静态（韩国）国家的定义。具有特定的新儒家历史和非欧洲中心模式的解读女性能动性。通过对机构档案的拼凑，我探索了在国内和国际上建立对chogakbo认知的过程。通过对材料技术、形式和成分的分析，实物丰富并挑战了书面历史。我以纪念品为研究对象，考察重复、重复、工业化、大众消费和生产如何强化国家身份的确立版本。穿搭时装旨在探索物体与身体之间的界限，以及拼凑包装的实用性和功能。最后，这些问题和主题将通过拼接皮肤进行调查，其中韩国整容文化的扩散将被视为拼接的身体表现。利用口述历史，该作品旨在通过挑战代理，资本身份和殖民历史的简化观念的视角，突出女性，美丽和装饰主义的问题。拼凑是将不同的碎片混合在一起，通过修补、拼接和缝合来反映一种累积的时间性。这项研究利用拼凑形式的适应性和不断增长的潜力，从根本上重新考虑韩国女性的既定概念，并为解决有关殖民主义、冷战遗产和女性历史的紧迫全球问题提供了一个原始的视角。我的目标是通过从物品中收集的故事，以及制造者、设计师、策展人、档案保管员和口述历史的视角，揭示支撑殖民主体性和跨国身份的材料过程，以建立对话和关系历史。

This work explores the (re)construction of the Republic of Korea (ROK, 1948-present) through Korean women's patchwork culture, recording and recovering neglected stories of women's domestic labour. Written histories of the patchwork handicraft, chogakbo, began to proliferate during the 1970s, coinciding with South Korean institutional reforms of cultural heritage policy. Reiterating qualities of frugal tenacity and constructive minimalism, such narratives trace the cloths in a linear trajectory to the Choson dynasty (1392-1910), where they were and are said to act as the representational voices of forgotten and unknown women. Furthermore, the linear histories served to reinforce notions of authentic 'Koreanness' during a period that sought to differentiate national identity from the Communist regime of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea). This project troubles linearity and authenticity by deploying feminist, postcolonial and decolonial methods that explore polyphonic perspectives of Korean women's patchwork culture. Using a framework that positions postcolonialism within localised and transnational South Korean histories, necessarily considering the period of Japanese colonialism (1910-1945) and US imperial presence (1945-present), iterations of traditional forms, modern adaptations, diasporic interpretations and corporeal manifestations reveal the multiplicity and complexity of Korean womanhood beyond definitions of authentic and static (South) Korean nationhood, with specific histories of neo-Confucian and non-Eurocentric modes of reading female agency. Using patchwork in institutional archives, I explore the very processes of establishing perceptions of chogakbo, both nationally and internationally. Material objects enrich and challenge written histories through analyses of material technologies, forms and compositions. I regard souvenir objects to examine how repetition, reiteration, industrialization and mass consumption and production work to reinforce establishing versions of national identity. Worn patchwork fashions aim to explore the boundaries between object and bodies, and the utility and function of patchwork wrapping. Finally, these questions and themes will be investigated through patchwork skins, wherein the proliferation of ROK's cosmetic surgery culture will be examined as corporeal manifestations of patchwork. Using oral histories, this work aims to foreground questions of womanhood, beauty and ornamentalism through perspectives that challenge reductive perceptions of agency, capital identities and colonial histories. Patchwork is the amalgam of different pieces, reflecting an accumulative temporality through mending, piecing and stitching. This research uses the adaptive, growing potential of patchwork form to radically reconsider prescribed notions of Korean womanhood, and offer an original lens to addressing urgent global questions regarding colonialism, Cold War legacy and women's histories. I aim to shed new light on the material processes underpinning colonial subjectivities and transnational identities, using stories collected from objects, alongside perspectives of makers, designers, curators and archivists and oral histories to build dialogical and relational histories.