Join art historian Sohl Lee (Stony Brook University) for a virtual lecture on her recent book, The Minjung Art Movement: Decolonization and Democracy in South Korea, which offers the first comprehensive art-historical study of this pivotal activist art movement. In this online talk, Lee explores how minjung (people’s) art articulated intertwined aspirations for decolonization and democracy during South Korea’s 1970s–80s pro-democracy struggles, reshaping our understanding of contemporary Korean art.

Guest speaker: Sohl Lee is an art historian, curator, and writer who specializes in modern and contemporary Asian art—especially the art of Korea—in relation to decolonial politics, social movements, and ecological futures. She is Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary East Asian Art History in the Department of Art at Stony Brook University (SUNY), where she teaches and writes on topics including the 1970s–80s minjung (people’s) art movement in South Korea, eco‑aesthetics, and oceanic/Transpacific visual cultures. Her recent book, The Minjung Art Movement: Decolonization and Democracy in South Korea, offers the first comprehensive English‑language study of that movement, tracing how artists used printmaking, painting, performance, and image circulation to build “movement publics” and reimagine democracy and sovereignty in the wake of the Japanese empire, the Korean War, and authoritarian rule.