@article{ART003351159},
author={이솜이},
title={A Study of Lee Bul’s Early Performances: Bodies at Odds with the Category of Woman within BDSM Structures},
journal={Journal of History of Modern Art},
issn={1598-7728},
year={2026},
number={59},
pages={127-152}
TY - JOUR
AU - 이솜이
TI - A Study of Lee Bul’s Early Performances: Bodies at Odds with the Category of Woman within BDSM Structures
JO - Journal of History of Modern Art
PY - 2026
VL - null
IS - 59
PB - 현대미술사학회
SP - 127
EP - 152
SN - 1598-7728
AB - This study examines Lee Bul’s early performances in the 1990s as bodily practices in which a fragmented subject employs BDSM structures to disrupt relations of power surrounding the body produced performances that come into tension with the sign and category of “woman.” Her work, centered on a self-destructive body, destabilizes relations between sadism and masochism, performer and audience, and subject and object, and generates a body that resists stabilization in normative roles, identities, and gendered art-historical frameworks. Rather than situating these works within established readings of women’s art, this study reads them as performative practices that traverse the sign “woman,” producing internal fractures and reconfigurations. Emerging in the late 1980s, Lee’s practice is marked by self-destructive impulses and fragmented subjectivity, expressed through images of bodily rupture, death, and multiple personas. In performances such as Abortion (1989) through the early 1990s, she positioned herself and her audience in volatile relational structures oscillating between control and submission. By intensifying these dynamics, her work reconfigures the mechanisms through which the female-artist body is produced and interpreted. This study argues that Lee’s early performances exceed feminist representational frameworks and proposes instead a body that cannot be stabilized in fixed categories or signifying systems.
KW - Lee Bul;Self Destructive Body;BDSM;Masochistic Performance;Korean Women’s Performance Art
DO -
UR -
ER -
이솜이. (2026). A Study of Lee Bul’s Early Performances: Bodies at Odds with the Category of Woman within BDSM Structures. Journal of History of Modern Art, 59, 127-152.
이솜이. 2026, "A Study of Lee Bul’s Early Performances: Bodies at Odds with the Category of Woman within BDSM Structures", Journal of History of Modern Art, no.59, pp.127-152.
이솜이 "A Study of Lee Bul’s Early Performances: Bodies at Odds with the Category of Woman within BDSM Structures" Journal of History of Modern Art 59 pp.127-152 (2026) : 127.
이솜이. A Study of Lee Bul’s Early Performances: Bodies at Odds with the Category of Woman within BDSM Structures. 2026; 59 : 127-152.
이솜이. "A Study of Lee Bul’s Early Performances: Bodies at Odds with the Category of Woman within BDSM Structures" Journal of History of Modern Art no.59(2026) : 127-152.
이솜이. A Study of Lee Bul’s Early Performances: Bodies at Odds with the Category of Woman within BDSM Structures. Journal of History of Modern Art, 59, 127-152.
이솜이. A Study of Lee Bul’s Early Performances: Bodies at Odds with the Category of Woman within BDSM Structures. Journal of History of Modern Art. 2026; 59 127-152.
이솜이. A Study of Lee Bul’s Early Performances: Bodies at Odds with the Category of Woman within BDSM Structures. 2026; 59 : 127-152.
이솜이. "A Study of Lee Bul’s Early Performances: Bodies at Odds with the Category of Woman within BDSM Structures" Journal of History of Modern Art no.59(2026) : 127-152.
