KJCKorea
Journal Central

With the upsurge of ‘globalization’ and the emergence of the third-world art in the major venues of international art scenes, the artists from the third-world nations have been welcomed as new members of global contemporary art and expected to add diversities into the traditions of western modernism. In this context, the national identity, among other factors, has been championed by the leading curators and critics of the first world as a useful standard that evaluates the specificity of the third-world artworks. This paper deals with three Chinese artists and their works; Song Dong’s <Waste Not>(2006) consists of used or obsolete household objects such as old clothes, shoes, cracked dishes, plastic bottles and other junks; Ai Weiwei’s <Fairytale Project>(2007) brought 1001 Chinese tourists and equal number of Ming·Qing dynasty chairs into the city of Kassel as a part of Kassel Documenta exhibition; Lee Mingwei’s <Sonic Blossom>(2013) employs multi-national references, such as German Lied, Austrian composer, and Korean singers. Analysing these three works, this paper explores a wide spectrum of tactics and problems of national identity in the contemporary third-world art.

national identity, third-world art, national allegory, Frederic Jameson, ong Dong, Ai weiwie, Lee Mingwei