Event series: Cambridge Heritage Seminars
Event Speaker: Dr Hyung Kyung Lee (CRASSH, University of Cambridge and Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)
Online via Zoom! Registration required - click here
The distributed memorial-scape of 'comfort women' statues: the creation of transnational shared visual culture.
In December 2011, a statue of a comfort woman (also often referred to as a ‘Statue of Peace’) was erected in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul in honour of the 1000th weekly Wednesday Civic Rally— a long-lived social movement which has called for an official apology and compensation for the Korean victims who suffered sexual enslavement at the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. Since then, the ‘Statue of Peace’ has become an icon and is viewed as a beloved symbol of women’s human rights, and has been placed not only in South Korea, but all across the Asian continent, Australia, Canada, Germany and the U.S. Despite their diverse locations, the statues have taken on the same symbolic expression to present a unified message. Adopting the concept of ‘distributed memorial-scape’ (Sørensen and Adriansen 2015), this presentation examines how these statues have contributed to the creation of a transnational shared visual culture, and how universalised symbols can convey transnational messages and values within contested space politics.