Christin Yu

This work explores the (re-)construction of the Republic of Korea (ROK, 1948-present) through Korean women's patchwork culture, recording and recovering neglected stories of women's domestic labour. Written histories of the patchwork handicraft, chogakbo, began to proliferate during the 1970s, coinciding with South Korean institutional reforms of cultural heritage politics. Reiterating qualities of frugal tenacity and constructive minimalism, such narratives trace the cloths in a linear trajectory to the Choson dynasty (1392-1910), where they were and are said to act as the representational voices of forgotten and unknown women. Such linear histories serve to reinforce notions of authentic 'Koreanness' during a period that sought to differentiate ROK's national identity from the Communist regime of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea).

Deploying feminist, postcolonial and decolonial methods that explore the varied iterations, perspectives and experiences of Korean women's patchwork culture, I trouble linearity and the boundaries of authenticity. Through archives, souvenirs, worn fashions and the skin, I aim to explore the boundaries between objects and bodies, utilities and functions and moreover, cultural identities and representations. Patchwork is an amalgam of different pieces, reflecting an accumulative temporality through mending, piecing and stitching. My research presents the potential of patchwork, while questioning the mythologies that come to define Korean identities and subjectivities that were constructed through neonationalist agendas of cultural reform.