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🇰🇷 South Korea /Culture & Society

Exploring the art of coexistence with life, I fell in love with seaweed

From Hankyoreh · () Korean

Translated from Korean, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

In-depth Sources not specified Context piece
  • Art historian Lee Sol is researching the global culture of seaweed, exploring its connection to tradition, history, relationships, and art.
  • Her research began during the COVID-19 pandemic and was spurred by encountering seaweed in unexpected places and art.
  • Lee's "practice-based research" involves cultural exchanges, cooking seaweed dishes, and connecting with communities to understand seaweed's role beyond food, linking it to climate change and indigenous movements.

Art historian Lee Sol, an associate professor at Stony Brook University, is deeply immersed in researching the global culture of seaweed, viewing it as far more than just a food ingredient. Her work delves into the traditions, history, relationships, and artistic expressions connected to various seaweed species worldwide.

Lee's fascination began during the COVID-19 pandemic when she noticed dried seaweed, a staple in Korea, miles away in New York. This sparked curiosity, which intensified in 2023 after seeing a Canadian Inuit artist's print depicting a rabbit eating seaweed at the Gwangju Biennale. This encounter revealed seaweed's presence in Korean, Japanese, and French art, challenging her initial perceptions.

Her research, which she terms "practice-based research," involves more than just academic study. Lee travels to places like Hawaii, New York's Long Island, and Jeju Island in Korea to document how people interact with seaweed. She actively engages with communities, sharing Korean seaweed as gifts and preparing seaweed dishes to foster connections and understand its significance in indigenous sovereignty movements and women's cultural traditions.

Lee has conducted performances, such as "Rimoo Report" in Jeju, where she created dishes using Hawaiian seaweed, Jeju seaweed, and agar-agar. In the Shinnecock Indian Nation territory in New York, she prepared dishes like seaweed soup and kimbap. These culinary exchanges serve as a bridge, sharing stories about seaweed's history, ecology, and culture while also introducing different types of seaweed across regions.

Ultimately, Lee hopes her research on seaweed will prompt a re-evaluation of human-centric thinking that contributes to climate change and ecological crises. Drawing inspiration from Korean democratization artists, she seeks to find meaning and purpose through her work, exploring the rituals, memories, and ecology intertwined with seaweed and the sea. Her efforts connect indigenous cultures, food sovereignty, ecological knowledge, and the climate crisis, viewing seaweed as a potential pathway to restoring humanity's relationship with nature.

In a way, I am in unrequited love with seaweed. To love something, you have to know it well, so I am exploring how they live and what they desire.

— Lee SolLee Sol, an art historian, describes her deep engagement with seaweed research.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by Hankyoreh in Korean. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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