EADS Spring 2023 Dissertation Workshop: SaeHim Park

The Statue of Peace (2011) is a life-size, bronze monument that calls to remember and seek redress for the “comfort women,” wartime military sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army from c.1931 to 1945. Created by the artists duo Kim Seo-kyung (b.1965) and Kim Eun-sung (b.1964), the Statue of Peace stands in front of the site of the Japanese Embassy Building in Seoul, South Korea. In 2016, the artists miniaturized the Statue of Peace and called it Small Girl Statues. Anyone can buy these miniatures. No longer meeting the intended gaze of the original statue, the Small Girl Statues now occupy the private spaces of people’s homes and have become part of their everyday aesthetics. What makes the Small Girl Statues so appealing, and what does it offer to the buyers and collectors? Beyond the Small Girl Statue’s monumentality in political aspirations and activist pursuits, this paper examines the aesthetics of love and desire by examining the pleasures associated with the Small Girl Statues.

About the speaker:
SaeHim Park is a doctoral candidate in Art, Art History & Visual Studies with graduate certificate in East Asian Studies at Duke University. This talk is part of her dissertation on "Imaging 'Comfort Women': Girl Statue of Peace in the Expanded Field."