Forgotten Modernist: Lee Qoede, Muralism, and the Geopolitics of Memory

Speaker: Jinyoung Anna Jin, Director of Asian Art and Culture at Stony Brook University’s Charles B. Wang Center and the author of Art, War, and Exile in Modern Korea: Rethinking the Life and Work of Lee Qoede (Amsterdam University Press, 2025).

Moderator: Ruth Barraclough, Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Modern Korean History, History Department; Director, Center for Korean Research, WEAI

Jinyoung Anna Jin is the Director of Asian Art and Culture at Stony Brook University’s Charles B. Wang Center. Her curatorial and scholarly work centers on Asian art, visual culture, and transnational histories, with a particular emphasis on modern and contemporary Korea.

She is the author of (2025). Her recent projects include the Korean Art Alive film series, which bridges traditional and contemporary practices through accessible visual storytelling. Notable video essays include (2025), (2025), (2022), (2023), and (2022).

Jin holds a BA in Art History from Hongik University, an MA in Art History from Columbia University, and a PhD in Cultural Analysis and Theory from Stony Brook University. She also serves on the Community Advisory Board of PBS Thirteen/WLIW.
www.jinyoungannajin.com

Professor Jin will speak about her new book, , released by Routledge in December 2024.

This lecture discusses the subject of Jinyoung Anna Jin’s recent book, Art, War, and Exile in Modern Korea, which seeks to restore a pivotal yet long-marginalized modernist to the center of Korean and global art history. Lee Qoede (1913–1965) painted during some of the most turbulent decades of the twentieth century—through Japanese occupation, the Korean War, and his eventual exile to North Korea. His portraits, murals, and large-scale narrative compositions bear witness to both the constraints of ideology and the resilience of artistic vision.

Jin’s book deals with a curatorial question: Why had Lee, once widely celebrated for his innovation, disappeared so thoroughly from South Korean art history? To answer this question, she traced fragments across archives in Korea and Japan, uncovered family photographs, consulted wartime newspapers, and examined scattered exhibition catalogues. She also studied works that had been misattributed or rarely reproduced, situating them within the current of Mexican muralism and multiple transnational cultural exchanges, particularly the social realism of 1930s–50s. Oral histories with former students and descendants added further complexity, revealing how Cold War censorship and the pervasive “red complex” shaped the limits of what could be remembered.

By reconstructing Lee’s networks across Korea, Japan, and beyond—and by interpreting his work through the lens of exile, Jin redefines the landscape of Korean modernism. The lecture will present key images, new attributions, and the research trail that made it possible to see Lee Qoede anew.

This event is co-hosted by the Center for Korean Research at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.

PLEASE NOTE: For non-Columbia guests, registration is required to access the Morningside campus 24 hours prior to the event. After registering you will receive an email with a QR code that must be presented along with a government-issued ID (your name must match exactly the name registered for the event) at either the 116th Street & Broadway or 116th Street & Amsterdam gates for entry. Please register using a unique email address (one email address per registrant) by 12:00 PM on Wednesday, February 18 for campus access.

Names will be submitted for QR codes 1-2 days prior to the event and subsequently reviewed. Registrants will receive an email from CU Guest Access with the QR code before or on the day of the event.

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Host or Publisher Center for Korean Research