Last year, I had my first solo exhibition. It was in the year when I last saw you — that is, only when I reached the age you were then. Of course, I had exhibited and worked before that too, but it was the first time I had an exhibition in a properly equipped gallery.
Looking back now, there were many things I regret about last year’s solo exhibition. But how could anyone do well from the very beginning? I can do better going forward, but I do not know how many of those “going forwards” will come to me.
Only then did I understand the things you had said to me back then. You said that showing works means creating a space and creating a context, and that this did not seem like something one could do well all at once. That is why you always felt regret after exhibitions.
I think you also said that with more experience, one can do better, and that even just paying attention to the exhibition composition is already busy enough, but it is difficult because of all the additional matters that come with an exhibition.
Unni, you remember the day you came back after installing an exhibition at a rather well-known art museum. That day when you bought beer that was ten thousand won for four cans, and we exchanged silly jokes before parting — I think I was a little envious of you that day, and thought that the things you said were just complaints. I should have listened carefully to what you said. I am sorry.
Perhaps after that day, you were slowly giving up the thought of making art. The lingering gesture and gaze of the curator you met that day, who approached you while promising another exhibition. Those were things that should not have been brushed off. To say that there were no hashtags, no Twitter, and no Instagram then would make me too cowardly and narrow-minded. I am sorry I could not fight alongside you.
I often remember how our conversation went astray that day. How long did you have to fight alone? Only now do I think about that, and I want to go back to that time and talk with you again. As you looked at me, who was about to graduate, full of expectation and confidence, thinking everything would work out once I had my graduation exhibition, what words did you swallow?
Was the faint smile you gave me a fatigue toward me, who was spilling over with an excessive ego, or was it consideration for a junior? Or, did you think that my era would be different, and that my future would therefore be different from yours, and so you said nothing?
After that, I graduated and started working at a company. It was because I had to earn money, but in fact, perhaps I was feeling for the first time the reality you had always been facing, and ran away from it. I grabbed every person I met and complained about the unfairness of the art world, yet I could not actually start working again. For quite a long time after that, I remained depressed about the things that had happened to me.
When I thought I could not possibly get out of it alone, a friend I met at a drinking gathering introduced me to a group of feminist friends. Each of them was angry at the world for their own reasons. But unlike me, who had fallen into self-pity, they acted directly and raised their voices. They changed the world little by little, in solidarity rather than alone.
Looking back, so many things happened in the year I met those friends. One day, I received a message from a friend who had endured the dark period with us, asking me to play basketball. Then I ended up joining a basketball team, and through experiencing a ball sport in which we stole the ball, bumped bodies, and played together as a team, I realized that I had been avoiding competition.
Why were ball sports, which teach you that it is right to yield when moments of competition come, but that sometimes you must also compete with all your strength, made into the exclusive domain of male students? Because I did not know this simple thing, I lived through too many moments by stepping back.
On another day, I met friends who do drag and lived for a while as “Drag king John Johnson.” Through drag, I was able to let go of the idolized masculinity within me, and escape the sense of frustration that had pressed down on me as I thought it would not change unless I was born again.
How to control my pace, how not to hate myself, how not to fall into self-pity, how to engage in fair competition, how to take care of myself first — I learned all of these from feminists. Day by day, I am learning many things from my peers. Being with my peers, I feel as though I am slowly escaping from and healing the nightmare of that era.
Thinking about it, I think I had been continuously looking for peers. Those peers may be the people I am with now, but they may also be the anonymous many whom I have never met but with whom I can stand in solidarity at any time. Because they speak from their own positions, I feel strengthened too.
Now there are no longer nightmares like those class hours in which no one understood us. Rather, now if I say I make work with queer-feminist narratives, there are so many eyes that can read them that I have to work with tension. I have to keep studying and check whether anything is lacking.
A few days ago, something like this happened too. While sitting and talking with peers, I was delighted and said that if an egg and an egg were combined to give birth to a child, only “girl children” would be born. Then one of those friends said, “You wouldn’t know until the child identifies themselves,” and I once again discovered my own insufficiency.
In the past, you said that when talking about queer issues, it was hard because you had to start from such a low level that you could not get to the story you really wanted to tell. Now we can have conversations that go further. And there are more audiences who can read them.
We are no longer on a tilted plane so steep that we cannot climb it. Someday, we must compete properly on a plane that will become level. The ones who made that plane level must all be the countless solidarities. Now we can no longer only blame the times.
Unni, one day after a feminist art class, we lamented why there were no openly lesbian artists in Korea. But I think that was because we did not know well. Perhaps we were trapped in the world called the art world, and instead did not know how to look outside.
Lesbian art was being made by numerous activists, as long as the history of queer rights. The reason we did not know that was probably because, inside art school, we only went to exhibitions at famous museums and galleries and read art magazines with power.
Even when we encountered their works occasionally at queer culture festivals, perhaps we unconsciously dismissed them in our minds as amateur works. But among activists, there were many who had majored in art, and there were also artists who used anonymous activist names. And more than anyone else, they voiced the messages they wanted to deliver to the world through progressive works.
Belatedly, I opened the exhibition 《Lesbian!》 last year in order to show their works. I printed the exhibition preface 100 copies at a time, four times, and so many viewers came during only ten days that all those papers disappeared. Now we must remember their brilliant activities and support the emergence of more works.
