Hybrid identities - Korean art; various artists, Queens Museum, New York, New York

Art in America, Sept, 1994 by Eleanor Heartney

The work here hints at Min Joong's identity crisis. Classic examples, like Bong Joon Kim's cartoon-style representation of a 1989 street demonstration or Min Hwa Choi's folk-art-inspired representation of peasant guerrillas in the 19th century, are joined by works which attempt to shift the discussion toward more contemporary issues such as Western consumerism and the oppression of women in Korean society. One also senses an effort to break away from the Social Realist-inspired esthetic. Among the more interesting works in the new mode are Bul Dong Park's photo-collages borrowing from the language of advertising to suggest the seductiveness of consumerism and Jung Hwa Choi's satiric homage to postindustrial society in the form of a tower of plastic department-store baskets and mass-produced plastic trophies. On the feminist front, Suk Nam Yun's pair of wooden silhouettes of a Korean woman, one that shows her in bridal dress and one that depicts her hanging herself in despair, is a bit heavy-handed, while Soo Kyung Lee's set of oval portraits of a Korean woman in a variety of Westernized costumes could be at home in any SoHo show about female role playing.

In the end, "Across the Pacific" suggests that one effect of global culture is to spread the pain of alienation across national borders. The rapid political, economic and social changes of the last two decades ensure that Koreans, whether they stay in their native country or venture overseas, can never go home again.

Eleanor Heartney is a free-lance writer based in New York.