With Chanho Park, a “Photo Mudang (Shaman)”: A Conversation on Korean Shamanism, Past and Present
Curated by Kyoo Lee
Curatorial Note: In Korean shamanism (mukyo or musok faith), the oldest indigenous religious-spiritual system and practice in Korea that precedes Buddhism, Confucianism and Christianity, followers with personal or familial troubles or anxieties seek solutions and protections from a myriad of deities, ancestral to celestial. How? Through a shaman (mudang), through whom humans and gods converse, connecting their stories. Elaborate shamanic rituals, kut, which turn into community parties, are inextricably embedded in rich artistic traditions of the country where suffering and singing, dancing (mu) and dying, merge and emerge together.
The following is a summary in English of the recent curatorial interview in Korean with Chanho Park.
In Korean, when someone passes away, we say they have “returned” … where? I have been preoccupied with questions around life and death, especially rituals surrounding death and dying since I lost my mother when I was a child. My photographic and video work on “Gui (return),” also homophonic with a ghost or spirit, is a layered reflection of all those years in pain and philosophical pondering. My artistic practice comes in part from such deeply personal experiences of mortality, community and spirituality. Then in the mid-2000s at photo festivals and biennales, I began to meet many photographers from other countries, some of whom talked knowledgeably and extensively about mythological imaginations and creation narratives, not founding myths of nations. What about Korea? I began to wonder. This is how I became interested in Korean shamanism, its indigenous roots along with its suppressed yet resilient history: how it has been thriving, so colorfully, nonetheless. “Daedong-gut” (2023, a “big unified” Daedong shamanistic ceremony) is a recent example of my research into and visual documentation of Korean shamanist culture.
Along the way, I have come to be jokingly referred to as a “Photo Mudang (Shaman),” an informal title given by the community of Korean shamans. My work, they say, is infused with distinctive shamanic energy and embodied understanding of the practice. I am honored to be so warmly embraced by them.
Then I also began to meet many Korean adoptees abroad, among about 200,000 Korean-born children adopted into Western countries in the 1970s and ’80s. Their life stories, punctuated with ongoing traumatic life experiences and agonizing identity troubles, moved me greatly, which led me to work with and advocate for them also as a photographer while at times praying for them in private candlelight ceremonies with them. How do we welcome back and give names to these once rejected, formerly Korean, souls? Musok ethos and pathos as well as logos with its own hermeneutic codes and divination process play a vitally curative role as shown in kut, a therapeutic, semi-improvisational theatre often publicly staged as a communal offering. Recently, for instance, I have also been helping organize musok-based programs to appease and heal bruised souls in the age of Asian hatred and anti-Asian violence in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Immediately relevant here, with deep historical resonances, is the double oppression of shamanistic culture by patriarchal Confucianism, on the one hand, and Japanese colonialism, on the other hand. Predictably, unwanted daughters were sent out first as the sons had to be saved first, and naturally, grassroots shamanistic performances were politically feared or else colonially fetishized by the imperial Japanese government. Again, questions around adoptees and artistic expressions for and by them can be explored from such dual lenses.
On a more global and transhistorical level, this dual focus on Korean shamanism today also entails a critical confrontation with typically Orientalist and chauvinistic approaches to its living heritage. Shamanism should not be “othered” as some object of anachronistic or idle academic curiosity. Rather, I turn to its matrilineal ancestry while staying engaged in various collaborative practices for communities in need across the board.
