Jung Kang-ja (; 1942–2017) was a South Korean visual artist. She was involved in the Korean avant-garde art scene in its formative years of the 1960s and early 1970s, during the repressive regime of Park Chung Hee. In this time she staged and participated in performances that challenged the contemporaneous artistic and cultural norms in South Korea.
Biography Jung Kang-ja was born in Daegu in 1942. Jung graduated from the College of Fine Arts at Hongik University. Park Seo-bo, a leader in the Art Informel movement and Dansaekhwa, was Jung's teacher at Hongik University. He encouraged her to explore various forms of art such as Pop Art, soft sculptures, conceptual art, and performance.Phil Lee, “A Pioneer of Korean Experimental Art of the 1960s and 1970s”, in Transnational Perspectives on Feminism and Art, 1960-1985 (1st ed.), Kennedy, J., Mallory, T., & Szymanek, A. (Eds.), Routledge, 2021, pp. 154-168, . Jung took inspiration from foreign art movements by looking solely at the images in art magazines available at the library such as Art in America and Mizue.Phil Lee, “A Pioneer of Korean Experimental Art of the 1960s and 1970s”, in Transnational Perspectives on Feminism and Art, 1960-1985 (1st ed.), Kennedy, J., Mallory, T., & Szymanek, A. (Eds.), Routledge, 2021, pp. 154-168, . was a founding member of the Shinjeon Group, formed in 1967, a collective made up largely of peers from Hongik. She later took part in founding the Fourth Group. A solo exhibition of Jung's work was closed early in 1970, and around this time the Fourth Group disbanded. Afterward, Jung "felt that she was no longer able to pursue her career as an avant-garde female artist in Korea." In addition, due to the oppressive politics, scathing public opinion of her, and the incessant insinuations that she was a prostitute her avant-garde pursuit waned.Phil Lee, “A Pioneer of Korean Experimental Art of the 1960s and 1970s”, in Transnational Perspectives on Feminism and Art, 1960-1985 (1st ed.), Kennedy, J., Mallory, T., & Szymanek, A. (Eds.), Routledge, 2021, pp. 154-168, . She had also run a private art school, but lost her clients due to social backlash. In 1977 Jung married and moved to Singapore where she stayed for 5 years and started to use a local technique called batik in her art. From this point on she primarily explored paintings and 2-D works that expressed her inner subjective experiences through surreal, exotic landscapes and figures. She returned to Korea in 1982. Upon her return, though, she was entirely forgotten compared to the prestige her colleagues had accrued. In 1990, she went on a trip to 8 African countries including Egypt, Gambia, Niger, Kenya, Senegal, Sudan, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, which heavily inspired her paintings. Shortly after that trip she also visited 6 countries in Southwest Asia: Thailand, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan. She published her sketches from this trip entitled, "South Asia Illustrated Travel Document Series," in a magazine. In 2004, she went on another trip to the South Pacific that inspired the imagery of her paintings. It has been argued that Jung's place in the Korean avant-garde scene was downplayed in comparison to her male colleagues. Throughout her career she held 30 solo exhibitions but hardly received attention until her inclusion in the 2016 exhibition an/other avant-garde: China-Japan-Korea at the Busan Biennale. Jung died in 2017 shortly after being diagnosed with stage 3 renal cancer.
Group Activities and Early Work Jung, along with other members of Shinjeon and later the Fourth Group, pioneered performance work in Korean art with what were called happenings () after the style of the avant-garde in the United States. While she didn't label herself as a feminist, Jung used her body and identity as a woman to transgress the societal gender expectations for women of her time.Phil Lee, “A Pioneer of Korean Experimental Art of the 1960s and 1970s”, in Transnational Perspectives on Feminism and Art, 1960-1985 (1st ed.), Kennedy, J., Mallory, T., & Szymanek, A. (Eds.), Routledge, 2021, pp. 154-168, .
New Exhibition Group The New Exhibition Group [신전동인 Sinjeondongin] which Jung was involved with explored performances and happenings. This group was founded in 1967.
Transparent Balloons and Nude Transparent Balloons and Nude (1968) was put on by Shinjeon Group at the Young Artist's Coalition's 4th Contemporary Art Seminar entitled “Happening Show.” Chung Chan-Seung and Jung Kang-ja were the main authors of the piece. Chung Chan-seung had suggested the group to try Yves Klein's Nude Happening. This piece also held similarities to Yoko Ono's Cut Piece.Kim Mi-kyung, “Performance Art of Korea 1960-70,” in Performance Art of Korea 1967-2007, Gwacheon: National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, 2007, pp. 28-37 The venue, C’est Si Bon music café in Suhrindong, was a famous place among young folk to watch singers perform. 350 audience members attended and were met with the music of John Cage playing on speakers and a tri-colored lighting system that flashed different colors. Jung came to the stage wearing white pants, a white shirt, and a white scarf. Once she sat on a chair, the male performers cut away all her clothes and left only her underwear. After that, the men blew-up clear balloons from a sticky adhesive plastic and then stuck them onto Jung's body. Once her body was totally engulfed in plastic balloons Chung Chan-seung, Kang Kuk-jin and some audience members pressed their bodies onto the balloons until they all popped or deflated, revealing Jung's body again. Silence followed the performance. Jung had been inspired to use the plastic adhesive balloons after watching children play with it. This was largely received by the media with shock, reflecting the conservative Neo-Confucian values of Korean society that Jung was defying.Chung, Yeon Shim. “Historicizing the Avant-Garde Contexts in Post-War Korea: From Experimental Arts to Collective Groups in the 1960s and 1970s.” In Korean Art from 1953: Collision, Innovation and Interaction, edited by Yeon Shim Chung, Sunjung Kim, Kimberly Chung, and Keith B. Wagner, 41-72. London: Phaidon 2020. While the participatory aspect was meant to "pop" men's fantasies about the female body, the public reception seemed to only reinforce and double down on it. This time period was also shaped by government crack-downs on body politics such as the length of women's skirts and men's hair.Kang He-seung, “1970 nyeondae I Geonyongui haengwiyesulgwa momui bokgwon [1970년대 이건용의 행위예술과 몸의 복권 Lee Kun-yong's performance art in the 1970s],” Mihagyesulhagyeongu [미학예술학연구 Aesthetic Arts Research] 59 (2020): 107–136. She was negatively targeted by the press for her participation in Transparent Balloons and Nude (1968) which was the first semi-nude happening.Phil Lee, “A Pioneer of Korean Experimental Art of the 1960s and 1970s”, in Transnational Perspectives on Feminism and Art, 1960-1985 (1st ed.), Kennedy, J., Mallory, T., & Szymanek, A. (Eds.), Routledge, 2021, pp. 154-168, . This significant piece was later re-created in the 2016 an/other avant-garde Exhibition.Lim, Donglak. AN/other avant-garde: China - japan - korea: Project 1 - busan biennale 2016: Busan Museum of Art. Busan: Busan Biennale Organizing Committee, 2016.
Initially, the group had agreed to hire a female model for the performance, but due to the shame associated with public nudity the model did not agree to participate. It's under this situation that Jung decided to step in. Also, Jung had the intentions of being completely nude for the performance, but the owners of C’est Si Bon asked the artists to hold back since the police officers were present at the time of the performance. Through this piece, Jung and the Shinjeon members were trying to present the body as higher in expressivity than any other art object and also complicate people's notions of artistic creation by presenting a temporal, participatory art. As opposed to the chaste image of the Korean woman's body which is never touched nor exposed, Jung's piece thrust the woman's body into the public eye. In the piece she is the artistic medium as well as the representative of all women, including herself as a subject. The press shamed Jung for her nudity and undermined the conceptual ideas the group had hoped to share.Phil Lee, “A Pioneer of Korean Experimental Art of the 1960s and 1970s”, in Transnational Perspectives on Feminism and Art, 1960-1985 (1st ed.), Kennedy, J., Mallory, T., & Szymanek, A. (Eds.), Routledge, 2021, pp. 154-168, .
Murder at the Han River Murder at the Han River (1968) was an outdoor performance staged to criticize contradictions of commercialism and hegemony of the established culture. Kuk-jin Kang, Kang-ja Jung, and Chan-seung Jung buried themselves in a pit under 2nd Han River Bridge. The audience and the reporter poured water over them, and they climbed out of the pit, wet. Over their wet bodies, they wore vinyl covers, each written with words such as, "Culture Con-man" (Pseudo Artist), "Culture Blind man" (Culture-phony),"Culture Dodger" (Idealist), "Culture Illicit Fortune Maker" (Pseudo Master). "Culture Peddler" (Political Artist), and "Culture Acrobat (Period Hitchhiker). They read these messages out aloud and then they burned and buried them. Many who came to see this performance whispered, were anticipating Jung to take her clothes off and were disappointed when she didn't. The artists shouted "We want to kill them all!' at the end of the performance. Despite public ignorance, this performance was an expression of their urge to burn the old monotonous culturural system that gravitated around the corrupt National Art Exhibition, and to bring back the respectability to the Korean modern art."Culture Dodger" (Idealist), "Culture Illicit Fortune Maker" (Pseudo Master). "Culture Peddler" (Political Artist), and "Culture Acrobat (Period Hitchhiker). They read these out aloud and then they burned and buried them; this was ‹Murder at Han Riversides" Pic.6. Many who came to see this performance whispered, "I heard a woman was going to take her clothes off. It's only cold and uninteresting here." And others only blinked their eyes at these artists shouting,
"We want to kill them all!' Despite public ignorance, this performance was an expression of their urge to burn the old monotonous culture system that gravitated around the corrupt
National Art Exhibition, and to bring back the respectability to the lorean modern art
The Union Exhibition of Young Korean Artists Her work was included in the Union's 1967 exhibition, which she took part in organizing.
Kiss Me One of the pieces exhibited, Kiss Me, was an example of Jung's work challenging and resisting gender normalities in Korean society, a subject that appears across her artwork. Jung's mouth-shaped assemblage Kiss Me (1967) gained a lot of attention from the press. Within the “teeth” of the assemblage, Jung installed a red rubber glove, a mannequin's head, and other items. Plaster was used to build the shape of a woman's lips while thin wood was used to make tooth-shaped cubbies between the upper and lower lip. The red rubber glove represented the invisible housework labor women were relegated to do while the title of the piece provocatively contrasts that traditional role.
Happening with Vinyl Umbrella On December 14, the third day of the exhibition, 10 artists from Zero and New Exhibition Group performed the piece Happening with a Vinyl Umbrella and Candle (1967). Kim Yeong-ja sat in a chair and held a clear plastic umbrella above her head while the other 9 performers circled around her, including Jung Kang-ja.
Jung Kang-ja's Other "Feminist" Art