Published on the occasion of the 58th Venice Biennale and curated by Hyunjin Kim, History Has Failed Us, but No Matter explores the history of modernization in East Asia through the lens of gender and the agency of tradition.
“The major concern for the three artists in this Korean Pavilion exhibition is to attempt to substitute the notion of identity in East Asian society, molded mainly by the merger of modernity, nation-state, tradition, and patriarchy, with notions of colonial-modernity, gender-Other, and transnationalism. The tradition revealed by the lens of gender diversification and gender complexity can replace the restraint of traditions.”—Hyunjin Kim
Like the namesake exhibition hosted at the Korean Pavilion, the publication looks at the works of the three Korean artists Siren Eun Young Jung,
Jane Jin Kaisen, and Hwayeon Nam as a challenge to dig into, rethink, and question the canon of the heterosexual male and the modality in which East Asian modernization has been interpreted, while at the same time exploring the emancipatory potential of Asian tradition.
