CHAN-HYO BAE
zu den Arbeiten:
Dem in London lebenden Süd-Koreaner Chan-Hyo Bae dienen westliche Monarchinnen aus dem 13. bis 19. Jahrhundert als Manipulation des streng hierarischen Machtgefüges europäischer Königshäuser.
Er schlüpft als blass geschminktes und irritierendes asiatisches Alter Ego in historische Rollen des alten Europa. Offensichtlich ausgeschlossen aus einer längst antiquierten, streng hierarchischen Gesellschaft des Hochadels und andererseits Imitator der stolzen Gesten von Herrscherinnen eines ihm fremden Kulturkreises eröffnet er ein Historienbild der surrealen bis kulturellen Gratwanderung.
About the work:
Chan-Hyo Bae has chosen the iconography of queenliness to express his own feelings of cultural estrangement. Originally from South Korea and currently living in London, England, Bae begins from very simple, common sentiments of foreignness. His works—large-format colour prints, in which he plays unidentified female British monarchs from the 13th to 19th centuries (all his works are untitled)—initially appear to be a cheeky sort of wish fulfillment.
One is readily reminded of Yasumasa Morimura, the Japanese artist who casts himself in Western art’s biggest roles, and also, perhaps, of the phenomenon of cosplay — the subculture of dressing up like fictional or historical characters — which originates in Japan but has become popular throughout Asia and the rest of the world. Bae seems to be performing a blatant paradox: that of the outsider gleefully destabilizing the hierarchies of a culture about which he has admittedly fantasized, but which has forbade him full entrance because of an unalterable ethnicity.
By David Balzer