Something Else

eastasianstudiestumbl:

hyungjk:

“Miners, miners must be masters of New Korea.”
1000x1600 mm by Kim Su Dong. 99 (2010) Juche

Notice the difference in the way women are portrayed in North Korean communist/totalitarian art. They have traditional hanbok in their motifs and even posters for campaigns that encourage North Korean women be feminine and traditional. The polar opposite of what was encourage in similar art of the Cultural Revolution where the women are effectively neutered with the only discernable difference between the male and the female figures being hair.

Equally, though not necessarily depicted here(though she does look matronly), North Korean art has a central matriarchal figure somewhat evoked here of Kim Il Sung’s Mother that is unparalleled in Chinese Cultural Revolution art even at the height of Jian Qing’s popularity. Qing is depicted in much the same way as Mao is a a red sun over China effectively neutering her femininty and equalising her with that of Mao’s. Yet, in either case neither is a ‘liberating’ narrative one being the penultimate in women is to be the antithesis in male and the other because it saying women need to be men to be equal.