Sunday Book Club

I found this book in almost every airport bookstore I visited this summer. Why is that? I want to figure it out by reading this book together!

'A book that changes the way you see the world'
Sunday Times

“From economic development, to healthcare, to education and public policy, we rely on numbers to allocate resources and make crucial decisions. But because so much data fails to take into account gender, because it treats men as the default and women as atypical, bias and discrimination are baked into our systems. And women pay tremendous costs for this bias, in time, money, and often with their lives.”

This venue is a different location from the usual Misajang cafe. This cafe is near exit 1 of Dongdaemun Station :-)

As the daughter of Helios, God of the Sun and mighty Titan, Circe is an outcast. After discovering her aptitude for witchcraft, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island where she hones her craft, tames beasts, and crosses paths with the most famous figures of Greek mythology.

Readers familiar with Greek myths may recognize Circe from several legends, most famously the Odyssey, where she is depicted as a witch who turns men into pigs. Through her novel, Miller seeks to challenge this narrow perspective of Circe and explore her rich history and evolving character.

While our book discussions are usually nonfiction, I thought exploring fictional stories would be an enjoyable and enlightening experience as well! I have heard wonderful things about this novel and I am excited to hear your thoughts and opinions as well!

Do you know how many female artists are featured in Ernst Gombrich's "The Story of Art," a bestselling art history book? None in the original 1950 edition, and only one—Käthe Kollwitz—in the 16th edition. In response to this lack of female representation, art historian and curator Katy Hessel wrote "The Story of Art Without Men," though it still lacks diversity in non-Western artists.

We're visiting the "Connecting Bodies: Asian Women Artists" exhibition at MMCA next week, and I'd like to be well-prepared by reading this book beforehand. Fortunately, I found it in almost every European museum I visited this year. It will prompt us to ask important questions: Who shapes art history? What is art? What should art be for? etc.

This exhibition is one of the best this year, acclaimed by many art critics and experts who visited Korea for Frieze and Kiaf. I'm thrilled to organize an event before the year ends!

Let's explore the themes of body, women, and Asia.

“Connecting Bodies: Asian Women Artists attempts a new examination of the contemporary meaning of post‒1960s art by Asian women from the perspective of ‘corporeality.’ It was developed as part of an Asian art project by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), which has carried out comparative research and exhibitions on Asian contemporary art beyond national borders. The body is a place where various ideologies and situations intersect, and it is also a locus that reveals difference and diversity. This exhibition assembles around 130 works by women artists from 11 Asian countries to explore this theme.

The exhibition also turns its attention to long-existing aspects of women’s culture, which has sought to understand thought/sensation and art/life in integrated ways. In this way, it attempts to discover artistic possibilities for encouraging ‘connections’ with those beyond us. At a historical moment when social sustainability is in doubt and a reappraisal of values is fundamentally needed, the feminist perspective‒transcending binary divisions of subject/object, culture/nature, and male/female‒can perhaps help us imagine an alternative world that embraces and connects a broader scope of being and identity.”