Hong Kong, Mexican, Korean artists, DJs confront colonialism's continuities, unearth diverse local cultures

From left to right, artists Carmen Serra and Martina Manterola of Colectivo Amasijo, Anunta Intra-Aksorn, Michael Leung and artist-curator Park Eun-seon give artist talks on the opening day of the "Disturbants of land, breath, sound: Aesthetics of Post-colonial culture" exhibition at Coreana Museum of Art space*c, Dec. 3. / Courtesy of Charyeong Lee, Listen to the City

By Elise Youn

When we think about the meaning of colonialism from the perspective of Korea, the first thing that comes to mind is the Japanese colonial era (1910-45), which ended with Japan's defeat in World War II and the Korean Peninsula's liberation. What we know as the "post-colonial" era then follows, encompassing the peninsula's division into the North and South, their occupation by the U.S. and USSR, the Korean War, the rise of communist and capitalist authoritarian regimes in the North and South, and the industrial and urban development, democratization and globalization of the South.

But what if we reconsider the meaning of colonialism as a broader, ongoing phenomenon, as a majoritarian culture that works to dominate, exploit and extract resources from diverse, minor, local cultures? It is this question that the exhibition, "Disturbants of land, breath, sound: Aesthetics of Post-colonial culture," running through Dec. 31 in Gangnam's Coreana Museum of Art space*c, asks us.

On the opening day of the exhibition, seven of the participating artists ― Carmen Serra and Martina Manterola of Colectivo Amasijo from Mexico, Anunta Intra-Aksorn from Thailand, Michael Leung from Hong Kong, Park Min-jun (DJ Soulscape) and Park Da-ham from Korea ― together with curator Park Eun-seon, reflected on this question in artist talks and a panel discussion to launch the show.

The panel was held in front of the video work, "City of Oblivion," by art collective Listen to the City. The video weaves scenes of the destruction of Seoul's half-century-old Euljiro alleyways by the forces of redevelopment ― metal fences dividing off demolished building sites from dilapidated metal-roofed hanok, a bulldozer breaking down concrete walls ― with interviews of owners of tiny metal factories being forced out by more profitable high-rise buildings. In one scene, inside a cramped metal shop, surrounded by stacks of metal canisters and machinery, a man plays a saxophone.

Park Da-ham gives an opening DJ performance beside the video work, "City of Oblivion" (2022), by Listen to the City, Dec. 3. / Courtesy of Charyeong Lee, Listen to the City

Artist Michael Leung of Hong Kong began his artist talk explaining how he has been working with the Wang Chau villagers of Hong Kong's New Territories. Wang Chau is a group of six villages nestled in the rural green belt between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China, three of which are targeted for demolition so that the government can build 4,000 public housing units and a private developer can build three 37-story private apartment complexes to prepare for a population influx as Hong Kong is increasingly integrated with China.

For Leung, who himself is a British national of Hong Kong descent who emigrated to Hong Kong in 2009, Wang Chau is a site of "colonial entanglements." Policies from the former British colonial government maintained in the Basic Law, the agreement between Britain and China that governs Hong Kong after 1997, classify residents who settled in the area before 1898 as "indigenous," granting them privileges to own and commodify agricultural land, while those who arrived after are "non-indigenous," making them, in the words of Wang Chau villager Mrs. Au Yeung, "second-class citizens" vulnerable to eviction.

Artist Michael Leung sits in front of his "Home to Many" (2017-present) installation. / Korea Times photo by Elise Youn

Wang Chau's "non-indigenous" are among Hong Kong's residents who are caught between "two dominant cultures, British colonial and Chinese communist, neither of which takes the welfare of Hong Kong people into account," in the words of cultural studies scholar Rey Chow.

Leung uses "art as a tool to share convivial resistance" with the Wang Chau residents, collaborating with one villager in particular, Ms. Cheng, to convey her life stories, from making a zine about the stray cats she and other residents cared for in Wang Chau, to featuring a floor tile from her demolished home in the exhibition.

His other work includes painting watercolor posters for the Wang Chau Jackfruit Festival, organized to support and publicize the villagers' rural way of life, designing maps and infographics of the area for tours to inform the public about the development plans, a seasonal farmers' market and a 1:1 watercolor banner of a jackfruit tree that survived demolition.

Colectivo Amasijo, a collective of female artist-researchers from Mexico, also presented their work reflecting on the diversity of Mexico's food. The collective's name means "dough" and "something mixed together" in Spanish. Among their projects are a collective kitchen where they cook and offer meals made from produce farmed and sold by local women and return to them food waste for composting, research collaborations with anthropologists to explore precolonial cooking techniques and interviews with other women about the ways they farm the land.

As Colectivo Amasijo's Martina Manterola said, "Women in Mexico sell and cook 98 percent of the food, grow more than 50 percent of it, but own only 2 percent of the land." Their work provides a platform for women to convey their stories and creates an archive of non-dominant voices.

Colectivo Amasijo's Martina Manterola holds a drawing and instructions on how to use herbs that predate the colonization of Mexico, part of the collective's archive in the library of the "Disturbants of land, breath, sound: Aesthetics of Post-colonial culture" exhibition. / Korea Times photo by Elise Youn

In the exhibition's library space, Colectivo Amasijo displays napkins, menus and placemats from their collective kitchen. One of the placemats is printed with slogans about the deeper implications of eating in Spanish: "eating is political, eating is feminist, eating is caring, eating is respecting."

In one corner is a small drawing of a meal being shared between Spanish conquistadors and an Indigenous group, alongside a menu with dishes unfamiliar to today's tastes: "tamal de masa colada en hoja de berijao (strained dough tamale on calathea crotalifera leaf), cacahuete en piloncillo ahumado (peanut in smoked raw brown sugar), mixiote de guajolote (roasted turkey wrapped in maguey leaves)."

According to Colectivo Amasijo's Carmen Serra, the drawing is of a meal shared in 1519 between Mexico's Indigenous Tlaxcalan people and conquistador Hernan Cortes, who formed an alliance to conquer the Aztecs, which was ultimately betrayed by the Spanish crown.

For Serra, the meaning of the work was in being able to recreate the 16th-century meal, because although most people today don't know the details of this important event in Mexico's history, "We can still cook this food, especially as women." Through that process, she said, "We can learn how our tastes themselves have been colonized."

The panel ended with performances by two Seoul-based independent DJs, Park Min-jun (DJ Soulscape) and Park Da-ham, who gather and mix local music from Korea and Asia. Park Da-ham gave the example of "moran," a country style of music with a "ppongjjak, ppongjjak" disco-like beat from Thailand ― similar to Korean "trot" of the 1970s and 1980s ― which he gained knowledge of through events he has been organizing through his independent label, Helicopter Records, since 2012.

The two DJs' archives of their efforts to locate, mix and deconstruct these local, non-mainstream sounds are featured in the exhibition.

Park Min-jun (DJ Soulscape) stands in front of his archival installation at the exhibition, "Radio Seoul / From the Basement" (2022). / Courtesy of Charyeong Lee, Listen to the City

After the reception, where makgeolli brewed in North Gyeongsang Province's Naeseong Stream area ― which has seen serious environmental damage with the construction of the Yeongju Dam in 2016 ― was served, curator Park Eun-seon broke down once more what she means by the ongoing forms of colonialism that continue to shape us and which the artists critique in their work.

"Even if you're not Korean, everyone has experiences of colonialism," she said. "Mainstream culture can colonize other cultures…. For example, K-pop is the product of big corporations. In order to make K-pop fancier, people put a lot of money into it. The investors want to make money with K-pop. But on the other hand, these investors never put money into independent culture or art other than K-pop."

She continued, "Even if you never think about it that way, the field is structured like that. So I was very interested in how I could make more independent, more authentic culture. I've been wondering, what is a more authentic culture? That's what this exhibition is asking: what are our knowledge systems? What are our cultural systems?"

"Disturbants of land, breath, sound: Aesthetics of Post-colonial culture," runs through Dec. 31 in Gangnam's Coreana Museum of Art space*c, and a bilingual Korean-English book featuring interviews with the artists will be published in January 2023.