Join us for a conversation with Sohl Lee and Jung Joon Lee, moderated by Yasufumi Nakamori.

In this conversation, art historians and scholars Dr. Jung Joon Lee and Dr. Sohl Lee will share their insights on the postwar artistic responses in South Korea. Dr. Jung Joon Lee’s current research and latest publication, Shooting for Change; Korean Photography after the War (Duke University Press: 2024), examine the role photography has played in both creative and documentary endeavors throughout historical events. Dr. Sohl Lee brings her perspective from a forthcoming title that focuses on Minjung art of the 1970s and 1980s, a movement where artists responded in wide-ranging mediums to the political and social issues of the time. The stories told through the art of this period and emerged from Dr. Jung Joon Lee and Dr. Sohl Lee’s new research will provide a fuller picture of postwar life in South Korea and the power of art in times of uncertainty.

Sohl Lee is an Associate Professor of Art History in the Department of Art at Stony Brook University (SUNY). She holds a BA with honors in Art History and International Relations from Smith College and a PhD in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester. Her first book, Reimagining Democracy: The Minjung Art Movement and the Politics of Decolonization in South Korea (forthcoming from Duke University Press), examines the multifaceted process by which a particular decolonial aesthetics of politics emerged during South Korea’s democratization. Her research interests also include Buddhist modernism, ecocriticism, pedagogical curating, and Global Asias. She has received fellowships and grants from the Social Science Research Council, the Getty Research Institute, the Korea Foundation, and the Arts Council Korea, among others. Her publications have appeared in exhibition catalogues, magazines, and academic journals in both South Korea and the US.

Jung Joon Lee is an associate professor of art history at Rhode Island School of Design. Lee’s research explores the intersections of art and politics, transoceanic intimacies, decoloniality, and gender and sexuality. Lee’s new book, Shooting for Change: Korean Photography after the War (Duke University Press, 2024) treats Korea’s transnational militarism as a lens through which to examine how photography makes meaning and shapes history. Lee was a 2022-23 Society for the Humanities Fellow at Cornell University and visiting scholar at Yonsei University’s Graduate School of Communication and Arts in 2022. Lee is currently working on a monograph project exploring photography and art exhibitions as spaces of transoceanic collaboration, kinship making, and repair. Lee received her Ph.D. in art history from CUNY Graduate Center.