This essay takes the work of queer artist Dew Kim, participating in the Focus Asia section of Frieze Seoul 2025, as a starting point to examine how queer discourse is taking root in the Korean contemporary art scene. A fuller discussion will follow in future writings that address the critical discourses shaping 21st-century Korean contemporary art.


 
1. What Is Queer?

The term ‘queer’ originally meant strange or abnormal. In the late 20th century, LGBTQ movements reclaimed it as a term of self-identification, while academia witnessed the emergence of Queer Theory, exemplified by Judith Butler’s notion of gender performativity.
 
Today, in the art world, queer does not simply mean art by or about sexual minorities. It exposes and disrupts the arrangements of power, norms, and desire, functioning as a methodology for rewriting social language through art. In the 21st century, queer has evolved beyond a marker of identity into a deconstructive language of norms. It has become one of the most radical tools for exposing the contradictions that social orders and institutions conceal.


 
2. Dew Kim: The Intersection of Desire and Taboo

At Frieze Seoul 2025, Dew Kim’s work presents queer not as a statement of sexual orientation but as a device for visualizing cultural power structures. He juxtaposes the moral authority of Christianity with the taboos and politics of pleasure embodied in BDSM.

His installations combine glittering ornaments, fragmented body parts, crucifixes and chalices, and BDSM paraphernalia such as leather belts and whips. This excess of imagery is more than provocation: it compels the viewer to sense how Korean society manages the simultaneous operations of desire and discipline.

In a society where religious ethics and family-based norms remain powerful, popular culture may appear liberating but often internalizes uniform codes. Dew Kim visualizes these tensions, revealing psychic landscapes where pleasure and sanctity, sin and taboo coexist.

His strategy resonates with David Bowie’s gender-bending performances that unsettled pop-cultural norms, and with Félix González-Torres’s installations that brought private love and public politics into the exhibition space. Dew Kim positions queer not as a symbol of identity but as an aesthetic mechanism that twists and redistributes social power.


 
3. Kim Jaeseok and X-Large: Reading the Queer Strata of the City

Kim Jaeseok, director of X-Large, extends queer discourse beyond gallery walls into the fabric of the city. His tours of the Jongno and Euljiro districts reveal them not merely as neighborhoods but as layers of Korean queer cultural history.

X-Large is a domestic house in Gahoe-dong converted into an exhibition space. Visitors remove their shoes to enter; admission is limited to four people at a time; the space operates Wednesday to Saturday, noon to 6 p.m., strictly by reservation.
 
This intimate setting creates a radically different experience from large museums or commercial galleries. Encountering art in a space akin to a private home, audiences experience it through everyday and bodily sensibilities rather than institutional authority.

This approach reveals queer discourse outside institutional records. X-Large links with the historical traces of Jongno and Euljiro, functioning as a site that activates local memory.
 
It recalls global precedents where queer communities and art forged spatial identities—Christopher Street in New York, Schöneberg-Nollendorfplatz and Kreuzberg in Berlin, Zona Rosa and Roma in Mexico City.


 
4. The Multilayered Perspectives of Global Queer

In the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ’90s, artists such as Félix González-Torres and David Wojnarowicz transformed queer art from a representation of identity into a language of political survival.

In Berlin and London, queer feminism intersected with postcolonial theory, leading to exhibitions that examined migration, gender, and race together. In Santiago, Mexico City, and São Paulo, queer art directly confronted religious taboos and political repression, manifesting a distinct regional radicalism.

In East Asia, diverse experiments also emerged. In Japan, Shimura Takako’s manga 『Wandering Son』 (Hourou Musuko) addressed transgender identity and adolescent gender experience. In China, Zhang Yuan’s “East Palace, West Palace” (1996) is regarded as the first feature film from mainland China centered on homosexuality.

In Taiwan, the Taiwan International Queer Film Festival, launched in 2014, provided an institutional foundation for queer culture, encompassing art, film, and performance.

Queer discourse in Seoul aligns with these global developments while bearing distinct tensions. Korean society’s entrenched family-centered norms and religious authority make queer art not just a cultural expression but a force that exposes structural fissures. Recent developments—Frieze Seoul’s programming that foregrounds queer perspectives, independent queer festivals, and university museums’ gender archive exhibitions—position Seoul as a vital Asian context for queer art.


 
5. What Does Queer Subvert?

Judith Butler argued that gender is not innate but the performative result of repeated acts. Queer art thus treats identity not as essence but as a deconstructable language, exposing the operations of norms.
 
José Esteban Muñoz described queer not as a fixed present identity but as a horizon of futurity—art as a space for imagining communities that have yet to come. After Jean-François Lyotard’s pronouncement of the “end of grand narratives,” queer emerges as a minor language that destabilizes grand discourses and expands institutional ruptures.
Together, these theories frame queer art not merely as a tool for visibility but as a political act of rewriting language, power, institutions, and space.


 
6. Queer Discourse in Seoul’s Global Era

Seoul is one of the fastest-growing art scenes in Asia, yet it remains a society where conservative norms are strongly operative. The global success of Korean cultural industries is predicated on uniform image production, while family-centric and religious authority within society suppress diversity.
 
Within this tension, queer art disrupts both. It fractures the homogenizing tendencies of international industry while giving voice to those silenced by local structures of repression. By mobilizing urban strata in neighborhoods like Jongno and Euljiro, queer art rewrites the city’s sensory and cultural script, positioning Seoul as a key site for global queer discourse.
 
The question “What is queer?” does not demand a definitive answer. Queer is a perpetual question, an ongoing process of unsettling and rewriting boundaries.

Queer is not confined to the identity of sexual minorities. It is a language for rereading the city, art, power, and the world—linking to global queer experiments while generating a uniquely Korean tension. Ultimately, queer stands today as the most intimate yet precise of positions: a core language of 21st-century global art.

References

• • Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (1990), Bodies That Matter (1993)
  • José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia (2009)
  • Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (1979)
  • Félix González-Torres, works including Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)
  • David Wojnarowicz, works and activism during AIDS crisis (1980s–90s, New York)
  • David Bowie, performances challenging gender norms (1970s–80s)
  • Dew Kim, artist profile & Frieze Seoul 2025 program
  • X Large Gallery (Seoul, Gaheo-dong), official visitor information
  • Stonewall/Christopher Street, New York (LGBTQ+ rights history)
  • Schöneberg–Nollendorfplatz & Kreuzberg, Berlin (queer culture districts)
  • Zona Rosa & Roma, Mexico City (queer cultural hubs)
  • Shimura Takako, Wandering Son (Hourou Musuko, 2002–2013)
  • Zhang Yuan, East Palace, West Palace (1996, PRC queer cinema)
  • Taiwan International Queer Film Festival (since 2014)