Fashioning the National Body through Patchwork
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
- Venue
- Russell Square: College Buildings
- Room
- RG01
About this event
A mystic curator, ‘manga kewpies’ and fantastical super-pigs are pieced together in this history of Korean patchwork.
Commonly known in South Korea as jogakbo, the national histories of the form arise from a period of cultural preservation under government policy. The written record of the textile that is composed of fragments sutured together can be traced to the authorship and conservation work of Huh Dong Hwa (1926-2018), a private patron of the arts, whose collection of Korean textiles and embroideries were posthumously donated to the Seoul Museum of Craft Art. The sewn together forms now signify narratives of Korean womanhood labouring under the disciplining confines of neo-Confucian society during the Joseon period. As a result, the form has come to also symbolise the national body. This lecture explores how these ornamental objects and surfaces move through multiple significations, reinforcing and complicating the nationalist histories of Korean women.
About the speaker
Christin Yu is a Lecturer of Cultural Studies in the Fashion, Jewellery, and Textiles and an Associate Lecturer in the MA Fashion Histories & Theories programmes at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London (UAL). She is currently taking PhD students. Her research interests include decolonial theories and methodologies, East Asian and diasporic identities, transnational design and material studies, and global feminisms. After her recently completed AHRC-funded PhD at the Royal College of Art, she is working toward the publication of her monograph, based on her research 'Fragments and Borders: (re)constructing Korean womanhood through patchwork'. She is an Associate Fellow at the Transnational Art, Identity and Nation Research Centre (TrAIN). Additionally, she serves as the Secretary for the British Association for Korean Studies (BAKS). Her professional experiences include working as the Menswear Print Designer at Alexander McQueen between 2012 to 2017, developing womenswear prints at Alexander McQueen, Ellery, and Peter Pilotto, and being shortlisted for the Elle Decoration Best British Design Award in 2013.
Registration
This event is free, open to the public, and held in person only.
- Organiser: SOAS Centre of Korean Studies
- Contact email: centres@soas.ac.uk
Header image: Film still from Okja. Dir. By Bong Joon Ho (Netflix, 2017).
