A work featured in the Korea Artist Prize exhibition has caused uproar, with critics claiming it promotes the use of sex dolls.
Tomorrow (2020), by Jung Yoonsuk, a finalist in the prize, is a two-hour documentary focusing on a factory that makes the lifelike sex aids, alongside a series of photographs featuring parts of the female dolls closeup.
Invariably most of the furore only occurred when the the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, shared images of the work on its social media accounts. Comments on Instagram included: ‘Is the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art formally defending rape dolls? Don’t package rape and sexual objectification as art’ and ‘This is how Korea thinks of women now’. The museum said in a statement that the work in fact ‘casts a critical gaze on the current social issue of buying and selling human dolls’.
The winner of the prize, chosen from the four-person shortlist which also includes Chung Heesung, Lee Seulgi and Kim Minae, will be announced in February 2021, and awarded a grant of KRW 10 million.
