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The Allure of Vision: The Act of Seeing in Albert van Ouwater’s The Raising of Lazarus

by Sunmin Cha

Albert van Ouwater’s The Raising of Lazarus (ca. 1460–1475) is a spectacle in every sense of the word. This rare surviving work by the pioneering Haarlem painter is not only a visual feast for the viewer but also a profound meditation on the act of seeing itself.¹ The painting is populated with carefully rendered figures dressed in vibrant, richly detailed attire, their varied poses and expressions drawing the eye across the composition. In the foreground, the viewer encounters the striking figure of Lazarus himself. His pale, lifeless body, now restored to life, is depicted in a vulnerable state of nudity, drawing immediate attention to the miraculous narrative from the Bible. Arriving in Bethany four days after Lazarus had died, Christ met Mary and Martha, Lazarus’s two sisters. After reaffirming the faith of the sisters, Christ called upon the dead man. When he said, “Come forth, Lazarus,” in front of the cave where he had been buried, Lazarus came out with his hands and feet bound in graveclothes.

Previous scholarship refers to Rogier van der Weyden’s The Exhumation of St. Hubert (fig. 2) in the National Gallery, London, as the direct model for Ouwater’s panel, explaining his innovative composition as an imitation of the master.² However, such an interpretation does not fully account for Ouwater’s distinctive approach. In this essay, I argue that Ouwater deliberately rendered Christ’s miraculous act as a visual spectacle. In doing so, he juxtaposed the biblical narrative with the contemporary liturgical spectacle of the Eucharist.

It should be noted that the moment of Lazarus’s resurrection had rarely been depicted in independent panel paintings in the Netherlands during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Traditionally, this theme was confined to illuminated manuscripts, particularly within the Office of the Dead in Books of Hours, where its placement underscored the narrative’s relevance to prayers for the deceased.³ Ouwater’s—or his patron’s—decision to isolate this moment from its traditional narrative context and depict it as an independent panel painting marks a significant shift. It transforms the scene from a private devotional aid in small-size manuscripts into a striking large-scale visual spectacle.                                                        

Moreover, Ouwater’s panel strikingly departs from the biblical description as well as the pictorial tradition.⁴ He moved the event to the choir of a Romanesque church.⁵ This indoor setting of the scene contradicts the biblical account of the event, which precisely refers to Lazarus’s tomb as a “cave.”⁶ To the best of my knowledge, Ouwater’s painting is the only fifteenth-century Netherlandish panel to set the Raising of Lazarus within an architectural interior.⁷ For instance, two Flemish manuscripts, roughly contemporaneous with Albert van Ouwater, depict the resurrection of Lazarus in a distinctly different manner from Ouwater’s panel. One is found in the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry which was illuminated by the Limbourg brothers between 1411 and 1416 (fig. 3). Another manuscript, known as the Salting Hours, was made in the workshop of Simon Marmion around 1470 (fig. 4). In both manuscripts, the Raising of Lazarus appears in the opening page preceding the Office of the Dead. While architectural elements are present, the open fields, trees, and expansive sky clearly establish the outdoor setting.⁸

In Ouwater’s panel, the inner space of the Romanesque church is occupied by the biblical figures. The painter clearly separated the spectators into two contrasting groups. To Lazarus’s right stands Christ, who has raised him from the dead with his hand in blessing. Mary kneels at Christ’s side, facing her brother in prayer. Martha—the second sister of Lazarus—and three disciples complete the group of people gathered around Christ. Each of them is depicted in humble gestures of devotion and reverence. In stark contrast, the figures on Lazarus’s left—lavishly dressed Jews—add an element of opulence and skepticism to the scene. Among them, two individuals vividly cover their noses, recoiling from the stench of the decaying body of Lazarus.⁹ The visceral response not only heightens the realism of the scene but also evokes a multi-sensorial dimension, inviting viewers to imagine themselves present in this miraculous moment.

In the immediate foreground, the protagonist of the narrative, Lazarus, emerges from his grave in a strictly frontal position, directly facing the viewer.¹⁰ In the miniature examples, Lazarus is depicted rising out of the grave in an oblique pose as he gazes at Christ (figs. 3 and 4). This is also visible in a later painting by Geertgen tot Sint Jans (ca. 1465–1495), who was a disciple of Ouwater (fig. 5).¹¹ In these instances, the pictorial emphasis is on Christ, not Lazarus. As Lazarus’s body and gaze guide the beholder’s attention to Christ, they emphasize that the miraculous resurrection of the dead was made through the intervention of God. On the contrary, Ouwater put a greater emphasis on Lazarus. In his painting, Christ is relatively invisible compared to Lazarus whose centrality and frontality immediately capture the beholder’s attention.

The unusual prominence given to Lazarus may allude to the Mass.¹² Since the earliest days of Christian theology, Lazarus’s resurrection has been understood as a prefiguration of Christ’s own resurrection and, by extension, the Eucharist. Just as Lazarus emerged from his tomb after four days, Christ rose from the dead. During the Mass, this resurrection was symbolically reenacted each time the priest elevated the host above the altar, emphasizing the transformative power of the sacrament.¹³ Twelfth-century theologian Simon Tournai likened Lazarus’s resurrection to the miraculous transubstantiation at the Eucharist, emphasizing that both events defied natural order through divine intervention.¹⁴

Indeed, the prominent place of Peter in Ouwater’s painting alludes to the priestly role in the sacrament of the Eucharist.¹⁵ Behind Lazarus stands Peter, who uses an expressive gesture to point out to the Jews the deep meaning of the miracle that is taking place before their eyes. Ouwater has given Peter an unusual position at the very center of the composition. Not only does he conspicuously occupy the middle of the painting, but his wide-open arms also introduce the resurrected Lazarus to the spectators in the painting and to the viewer outside the painting. His significant role in the resurrection of Lazarus is testified neither in the Bible nor in the preceding images.

Behind him, the remaining part of the building is separated by a wall-like structure. Behind this structure, the crowd trying to witness the event is seen through the grate of the window, and these figures form a dynamic, densely packed group. Their presence suggests the widespread fascination and curiosity surrounding Lazarus’s resurrection. Yet these figures are not merely decorative; they become participants in the drama, as they bear witness to the climactic moment of Lazarus’s resurrection.

Compared to the onlookers in The Exhumation who surround the entire ambulatory behind the screen, they occupy only a small part of Ouwater’s painting (figs. 6 and 7). However, the meticulous depiction of their gestures and faces effectively conveys their desire to witness the miraculous event in front of them. Given the approximately nine people tightly squeezed into a small window-like frame, one can almost feel how they push each other to get a better view of the miracle. For instance, one man raises his chin to look beyond another person in front of him, which shows his intense desire to witness the event. Even though Rogier van der Weyden’s panel is much more crowded, the onlookers behind the choir screen do not show any eagerness to see the event happening before them. Their calm and even aloof attitude strikingly differs from the spectators in The Raising of Lazarus who indeed illustrate the dynamic act of seeing.

Together, the figures of Lazarus and Peter, along with the spectators arranged along the vertical centerline of the painting and set within a Romanesque building, visually evoke the ritual practice of the Eucharist as understood in the late medieval period. As Miri Rubin has argued, at the center of the whole religious system of the Late Middle Ages lay a ritual which turned bread into flesh.¹⁶ The Eucharist serves as a means for believers to recall Christ’s past sacrifice while making it present and accessible to them. Through this reenactment of the original sacrifice, the ritual renews and imparts grace.¹⁷ However, the participation of the laity was limited to viewing the sacrament, as they rarely consumed the Host on days other than Easter.¹⁸ Instead, they regularly attended church to witness the Elevation of the consecrated Host.¹⁹

The exceptional level of desire to see the resurrection of Lazarus figured in Ouwater’s painting, in fact, parallels contemporary worshippers’ yearning to participate in and see the Elevation of the Eucharist. The Elevation was essentially a moment of the display. Introduced in the twelfth century, the ritual of raising the Host was designed to visually engage the laity and mark the moment of transubstantiation—especially since most worshippers had little understanding of Latin prayers.²⁰ To enhance its visibility, measures were taken such as suspending a brightly colored cloth behind the altar or using candlelight to silhouette the raised Host.²¹ In fact, according to a fifteenth-century Augustinian monk, some worshippers even called out to the priest, urging him to raise the Host higher.²² To see the Host was the most important element for late medieval devotees during the celebration of the Mass. This was to see the real presence of Christ.

Albert van Ouwater’s The Raising of Lazarus captures a dual spectacle: the viewer outside the painting marvels at Ouwater’s technical mastery and vivid storytelling, while within the painting, the spectators themselves behold the miracle of life restored by Christ. The late medieval viewer of Ouwater’s painting could identify with the onlookers behind the window, who embody the visual experience during the Mass. Indeed, a man clothed in red, looks directly at the viewer and urges us to join him. In this sense, the real spectators and painted spectators converge in Ouwater’s painting. This multi-layered interplay between seeing and being seen transforms the theme of the Raising of Lazarus into a deeply immersive experience, inviting the audience to reflect on their own role as spectators of the miraculous.

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Sunmin Cha is a PhD candidate at Columbia University focusing on the intersections between religious iconography and artistic production in sixteenth-century Haarlem, with a particular emphasis on the Man of Sorrows. She is currently writing her dissertation which examines how artists like Maarten van Heemskerck, Cornelis van Haarlem, and Hendrick Goltzius responded to the religious and political shifts of the time through their paintings.

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1. The attribution of The Raising of Lazarus to Albert van Ouwater (ca. 1415–1475) is largely based on the description of Karel van Mander: “I have seen a grisaille copy of a large, upright painting done by Albert, portraying the Resurrection of Lazarus. The original had been taken to Spain in a tricky way, without any payment having been made, after the siege and surrender of Haarlem. The figure of Lazarus was beautiful for its time, a remarkable nude painting. An architectural detail in this picture was a temple, of which the columns were rather small. On one side, apostles were shown, on the other, Jews. There were pleasing female figures in the picture, too. In the background some people could be noticed looking through a colonnade of the choir. (Daer was vam hem een paslijck groot stuck in de hooghte, waer van ick heb ghesien een ghedootverwede Copie, en was de verweckinghe van Lasarus: het principael werdt nae d’Haerlemsche belegheringhe en overgangh, met ander fraeyicheyt van Const, van den Spaengiaerden bedrieghlijck sonder betalen ghebracht in Spaengien. Den Lasarus was (nae dien tijt) een seer schoon en uytghenomen suyver naeckt, van goeden welstandt. Daer was een schoon Metselrije van eenen Tempel: doch de Colomnen en t’werck wat cleen wesende, op d’een sijde Apostelen, op d’ander sijde Ioden. Daer waren oock eenige aerdighe Vroukens, achter quamen eenighe, die toesaghen door Choor pilaerkens.)” Carel van Mander et al., The Lives of the illustrious Netherlandish and German painters, from the first edition of the Schilder-boeck (1603-1604): preceded by the lineage, circumstances and place of birth, life and works of Karel van Mander, painter and poet and likewise his death and burial, from the second edition of the Schilder-boeck (1616-1618) (Davaco, 1994). 1: fol. 205 v. The original Dutch is cited from James Snyder, “The Early Haarlem School of Painting: I. Ouwater and the Master of the Tiburtine Sibyl,” The Art Bulletin 42, no. 1 (1960): 42.

2. Stephan Kemperdick, “Albert van Ouwater: The Raising of Lazarus,” Oud Holland 123, no. 3/4 (2010): 241–43. Kemperdick convincingly demonstrates that the motif of the onlookers placed behind a grate in the ambulatory, the brightly lit ambulatory itself, and the open grave placed parallel to the picture plane in a tiled floor are noticeable in both paintings. However, his research likewise focuses on creating lineage between the artists. Based on Ouwater’s familiarity with the van der Weyden panel, he assumes the possible training of Ouwater in the southern Netherlands.

3. Kathryn M. Rudy, “A Pilgrim’s Book of Hours: Stockholm Royal Library A233,” Studies in Iconography 21 (2000): 250. Books of Hours were personal prayer books modeled after the breviaries used by monks and religious communities. Typically, Books of Hours included a variety of prayer sequences or offices, such as the Little Office of the Virgin Mary, the Office of the Holy Cross, and the Office of the Holy Spirit. The Office of the Dead was a specific sequence of prayers intended to be recited for the souls of the deceased, particularly aimed at reducing their time in purgatory. It was often visually introduced by scenes of death and resurrection, such as scenes of Hell, Purgatory, and the Raising of Lazarus.

4. Jacqueline E. Jung, “Seeing Through Screens: The Gothic Choir Enclosure as Frame,” in Thresholds of the Sacred: Architectural, Art Historical, Liturgical, and Theological Perspectives on Religious Screens East and West, ed. Sharon E. J. Gerstel (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection: Harvard University Press, 2006), 185–88. In her research on the Gothic choir screen, Jung specifically points out that the indoor setting of the painting contradicts the biblical description of the tomb of Lazarus. She compares the wall-like structure in Ouwater’s The Raising of Lazarus with the Gothic choir screen, which does not only conceal the sacred event from the laity but also reveals it to them.

5. Kemperdick, “Albert van Ouwater,” 235. Carved reliefs on the Romanesque capitals of the ambulatory depict scenes from the Old Testament—the Flight of Hagar and Ismael, the Sacrifice of Isaac, Moses Before the Burning Bush, and God Giving the Tablets of the Law to Moses. Snyder argues that Ouwater placed the event in the choir of a Romanesque church to show that the Old Testament period is ended by the age of the Messiah. Snyder, “The Early Haarlem School of Painting: I,” 39–55.

6. “Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.’” (John 11: 38–39).

7. Although I have not encountered any other depictions of the Raising of Lazarus set within an architectural interior from any period or region, given the vast scope of surviving visual material, I remain cautious about stating categorically that Ouwater’s panel is entirely unique in this regard.

8. In the miniatures, the architectural elements play only ancillary roles compared to the Romanesque building in Ouwater’s panel that encompasses the entire biblical scene. The destroyed Romanesque building in The Raising of Lazarus from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry implies the coming of Christ and the transition from Judaism to Christianity. Simon Marmion also depicted architectural detail in the background which looks like the wall of a city or the exterior of a building.

9. This does not imply that the negative depiction of the Jews is the original invention of Ouwater. In fact, the hostile depiction of Jews and negative connotations were highly prevalent in the religious images of northern Europe. However, they usually appear in the Passion cycle, especially as the tormentors of Christ. The scholarly discussion on Jews in premodern European society and their visualization is extensive. See Moshe Lazar, “The Lamb and the Scapegoat: The Dehumanization of the Jews in Medieval Propaganda Imagery,” in Anti-Semitism in Times of Crisis, eds. Sander L. Gilman and Steven T. Katz (New York University Press, 1991), 38–80; Ruth Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages, 2 vols. (University of California Press, 1993); Heinz Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art: An Illustrated History, trans. John Bowden (Continuum, 1996); and Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons, & Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton University Press, 2003).

10. His frontal view strikingly contrasts with the almost horizontal body of St. Hubert in Rogier van der Weyden’s painting, an alleged source for Ouwater. Without any mediating help, Lazarus stands up. The rigid frontal body of Lazarus and vertical direction recall the body and movement of Christ in his own resurrection.

11. Henry Martin Luttikhuizen, “Late Medieval Piety and Geertgen Tot Sint Jan’s ‘Altarpiece for the Haarlem Jansheren’” (PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1997), 192.

12. As the resurrection of Lazarus prefigures that of Christ, the tomb in Ouwater’s painting also reminds the viewer of Christ’s sarcophagus. Given that the altar was commonly interpreted as Christ’s allegorical tomb since the Carolingian period, the parallel placement of the tomb is significant. Godefridus J. C. Snoek, Medieval Piety from Relics to the Eucharist: A Process of Mutual Interaction (E.J. Brill, 1995), 186–202.

13. Luttikhuizen, “Late Medieval Piety,” 192.

14. Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record, and Event, 1000–1215 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), 15.

15. Even though he does not carry his attributes, Peter’s physiognomy is recognizable. By the fifteenth century, St. Peter was commonly portrayed with a distinctive bald patch on the crown of his head. Since the ninth century, only priests were permitted to handle the host, which led to the widespread practice of the priest placing it directly into the worshipper’s mouth. This reinforced the priest’s role as a mediator between the divine and the laity. Luttikhuizen, “Late Medieval Piety,” 196.

16. Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 1.

17. Luttikhuizen, “Late Medieval Piety,” 194–5.

18. Rubin, Corpus Christi, 64. The laity seems to have avoided communion at least in part due to concerns about placing Christ in their unworthy bodies. They worried about whether they could have sexual intercourse upon receiving the sacraments without stripping Christ of his virginity and wondered what would happen to Christ if they became ill.

19. Luttikhuizen, “Late Medieval Piety,” 198.

20. Robert W. Scribner, Religion and Culture in Germany (1400-1800) (Brill, 2001), 90. A gesture of elevation came to mark the moment of consecration to offer its meaning to the audience, the real presence of Christ. As medieval theologians agreed that the transubstantiation occurred after the priest’s consecration of the Host with the words, the Elevation after consecration signifies Christ’s corporeal presence at the Mass.

21. Rubin, Corpus Christi, 54–63.

22. Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (University of California Press, 1987), 55. The Augustinian monk, Gottschalk Hollen, vividly attested to such enthusiasm as “they come when they hear [the] bell, entering to see elevation, and when it is over they leave running and fleeing, as if they have seen the devil.”

David Wojnarowicz, Peter Hujar, and (Other) Worlds Past a “Pre-Invented Existence”

by Gillian Yee

When Peter Hujar died from AIDS-related complications on November 26th, 1987, David Wojnarowicz’s first inclination was to photograph his mentor and former lover’s body in excruciating detail. In the chapter “Living Close to the Knives,” from his memoir Close to the Knives, he recounts his experience with Hujar’s death: the rapid decline in his physical and mental health, his angry outbursts as he sought last-ditch attempts for treatment, and Wojnarowicz’s attempts to talk to him as he coasted in and out of consciousness on his hospital bed. This chapter further describes Hujar’s last living moments in painstaking detail. Following the twitching of his eyelids, the final slow, steady intake of breath, and an all-encompassing stillness of his body, Wojnarowicz’s ensuing impulses managed to surprise even himself:

… I barely cried. When everyone left the room I closed the door and pulled the super-8 camera out of my bag and did a sweep of his bed: his open eye, his open mouth, that beautiful hand with the hint of gauze at the wrist that held the i.v. needle, the color of his hand like marble, the full sense of the flesh of it. Then the still camera: portraits of his amazing feet, his head, that open eye again—I kept trying to get the light I saw in that eye—and then the door flew open and a nun rushed in babbling about how he’d accepted the church and I look at this guy on the bed with his outstretched arm and I think: but he’s beyond that.¹

In a whirlwind of quickly intensifying emotions, Wojnarowicz’s impulse was to visually capture this intimate encounter with death that would heavily influence the rest of his artistic practice. Although the 23 resulting photographs taken in these moments allude to his lifelong occupation with human consciousness and mortality, they also permitted him to reside in an in-between space where both life and death coexist, and where Wojnarowicz was unrestricted by society’s expectations to grieve properly.

Living during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, Wojnarowicz resented the idea of “properly” dealing with these experiences of tremendous loss. This meant grieving quietly and out of sight, thus following a Euro-American tendency to deny, ignore, and avoid death and its resultant indicators. Many of the works he would create in the following years would directly respond to the deaths that resulted from the overt, widespread neglect and maltreatment of populations most affected by HIV/AIDS. Wojnarowicz’s photographs of Hujar show how this exploration into the “essence of death” acts also as an exploration into existence beyond the grasp of the “pre-invented,” which he describes as: “A place where by virtue of having been born centuries late one is denied access to earth or space, choice or movement. The bought-up world; the owned world. The world of coded sounds: the world of language, the world of lies.”² The pre-invented existence is therefore one that, in its ascription of white cisgender heterosexuality as the norm, commonly restricts life and marginalizes individuals based on race, class, gender, and sexuality in its promises of false histories and futures.

In using death and the corpse as the subject for his work, Wojnarowicz utilizes that which is typically considered abject as visual provocation for unraveling the boundaries between interior and exterior, self and other. In questioning the processes of subjectification—the defining of the ever-transitory, networked, indeterminate, and ephemeral self—this work offers an alternative ontological viewpoint regarding human existence, refusing to be bound by commonplace definitions of what being human is and how one should exist.³ That is, death and life are not two ends of a binary where cross-contamination (the “infection” of life with death) signifies abjected Otherness but are intertwined in a never-ending dance of feelings, sensations, intensities, and memories.

Both in their galleries and online collections, the Whitney Museum of American Art commonly displays three of these photographs as a triptych (fig. 1). Each black and white print shows its respective body part in complete isolation from the rest of Hujar’s figure; there is nothing else within the frame to focus our gaze on aside from the rumpled fabrics of his hospital gown and the bed linens below him. By isolating and centering the body parts almost perfectly within each frame, Wojnarowicz’s intimate shots of the (dead) body force the viewer to focus on details that might have gone unnoticed if he had captured the complete form. With the shot of Hujar’s head, for example, one’s gaze may catch at the places where shadows dance underneath his unkempt beard or the dip of his clavicle. In this same photograph, his vacant, unfocused stare interrupts a viewer’s gaze and discomforts them; it looms out from underneath half-lidded eyes, cast far beyond the picture plane. In their invitation for contemplation and close looking, the parts of the body presented in each photograph almost take on a life of their own, eliciting different sensations in their viewers and pointing to the reality that although we idealize our identities as whole concepts, they are often naturally incomplete and without borders. Wojnarowicz’s practice of separating the body into pieces through the camera lens, then, enforces the multiplicity of the human form, bypassing common perceptions of identity and knowledge as each piece holds distinct meaning and value for the photographer.

As Tomasz Sikora asserts in his analysis of Wojnarowicz’s work, death and mortality play a vital part in the artist’s oeuvre by producing an array of sensory and affective responses not commonly associated with the lifeless body, called “queer life-worlds.”⁴ Refusing to gloss over what we consider bad experiences that produce negative feelings, Sikora argues that Wojnarowicz used photography and the subject of the lifeless body in tandem to propose these experiences as an avenue toward extending our existence past our corporeal forms. As such, his work subverts the expectation of death as a bad experience; in its place is an embrace of “the cosmic dance of photons and images and bodies and sensations,” where a focus on lived experiences with new ways of feeling, living, and being affected give way to possible life-worlds that are alternative to pre-codified attachments in a necropolitical state.⁵

Hujar’s body is an exploration into these worlds through Wojnarowicz’s take on the essence of death: “the fears and joys of it the flight it contains … just all the thoughts and sensations this death this event produces in bystanders more spirituality than any words we can manufacture.”⁶ Undeterred by a reductive life/death dichotomy, Wojnarowicz utilizes these photographs to emphasize the ability to connect within a larger matrix of human existence. The close-up shots of his body—perhaps replicating a gaze that carefully and lovingly regards another’s body one final time—contribute towards a sense of absolute veneration, grieving the loss of one of the most influential men in Wojnarowicz’s life and capturing, in simple shots, all the wonderful memories and joy this body brought him over the years. It is a radical gesture of love and intimacy, an expression of life and death simultaneously, and a transformation of death from an all-encompassing endless void to a liminal state of being that allows temporary freedom from what he calls a pre-invented existence.

Wojnarowicz’s response to Hujar’s death is immediate artistic action, turning towards the reception and production of aesthetic sensations instead of rendering the dead body a passive, powerless object. As he lands his photographic gaze on different parts of Hujar, he releases the parts from the organic unity of the body, as if they’ve “become their own little persons” with their own subjectivities, histories, and sensations.⁷ In each shot, Wojnarowicz lays bare his relationship to this body so informed by love, intimacy, respect, and raw connection that it goes far past what should be conceivably possible in a pre-invented world of self-regulation and carefully codified rules. The photographs of Hujar’s body thus unravel the boundary between “I” and “Other” rather than reinforcing it, sharing contemplative, quiet, life-changing moments suspended in time, as if they represent the artist’s eyes traveling over Hujar’s corpse for the first time. They seek to capture the amalgamation of beauty, joy, and acceptance within a subject commonly associated with ugliness, trauma, and rejection.

As self-regulatory subjects within a pre-invented existence, we reject death as the supposed antithesis of life and avoid signifiers of death (i.e., aging and disease) because they threaten to violate a life/death binary. In contrast, the mournful quality of Wojnarowicz’s photographs is, as Marietta Radomska states in their discussion of queer death studies, an example of “practices that transgress the effects of white humanist melancholia and establish a relational ethics apt for unlocking congealed power matrices, and opening towards alternative futurities.”⁸ These images of the corpse become a conduit for alternative ways of being, inhabiting a liminal space where one isn’t cast into the outer bounds of society due to attributes of race, gender, sexuality, and able-bodiedness.⁹ Such an alternative is apparent in these quiet moments after Hujar’s last breath, when Wojnarowicz is alone with his body and captures all the things he finds beautiful and captivating. There is, in these alternatives, a certain freedom from a pre-invented existence that can only be seen and witnessed in death.

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Gillian Yee (they/them) is a second-year PhD student at Temple University specializing in global contemporary art history from 1980 to the present. Their goal as a scholar is to explore the realm of queerness, transness, and “non-normative” identities within art practices, thereby circumventing a traditional canonical understanding of the discipline.

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1. David Wojnarowicz, Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration (Open Road Integrated Media, 2014), 111-12. Super-8 cameras are typically for recording video, but in this instance Wojnarowicz only used one for photography.

2. Wojnarowicz, Close to the Knives, 96.

3. Maggie Hennefeld and Nicholas Sammond. Abjection Incorporated (Duke University Press, 2020), 19.

4. Tomasz Sikora, “Queer Life-Worlds and the Art of David Wojnarowicz,” Journal of Gender Studies 29, no. 1 (December 15, 2019): 76-87, https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2019.1692194. 

5. Sikora, “Queer Life-Worlds,” 82.

6. Wojnarowicz, Close to the Knives, 111-12.

7. Wojnarowicz, Close to the Knives, 82.

8. Marietta Radomska, Tara Mehrabi, and Nina Lykke, “Queer Death Studies: Death, Dying and Mourning from a Queerfeminist Perspective,” Australian Feminist Studies 35, no. 104 (April 2, 2020): 92, https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2020.1811952. 

9. Wojnarowicz, Close to the Knives, 118.

Echoes of Shamanism: Reimagining Tradition and Chance in South Korea

by Hamin Kim

As part of its New Year’s event, Hyundai Artlab commissioned artist Maia Ruth Lee to create a set of symbols predicting fortunes for 2024. This virtual project, titled Glyphoscope 2024, invited participants to select three cards from a set of twenty, each resembling ancient hieroglyphs (fig. 1). The experience, similar to drawing tarot cards, presented a brief interpretive text and a series of keywords that were drawn both from the selected glyphs as well as the initials of the participant’s name, offering a personalized set of affirmations to carry into the New Year. The interactive nature of this project, which combines algorithmic patterns with chance elements, reflects the enduring desire to find clarity amid the uncertainties of the future. Practices like fortune-telling, which are carried out with varying degrees of sincerity, remain deeply ingrained in contemporary society. We continually “test” our luck in various ways, from opening fortune cookies to seeking advice from clairvoyants.

Notions of chance and future prediction have often been dismissed as magical, unscientific, and illogical. Traditional faith systems that embrace such values have been in perpetual tension with the scientific worldview that emerged during the Age of Enlightenment. Especially in many countries that experienced colonization, this tension led to the suppression or transformation of indigenous traditions in favor of modernized (and often Westernized) visions of the future. South Korea followed a similar trajectory. Despite the influence of Confucianism during the Joseon Dynasty (13–19th centuries), and the introduction of Christianity in the late 19th century, shamanism, the primordial religion of Korea derived from Siberia and Northeast Asia, remained deeply embedded in the base of the country’s cultural terrain.¹ Even during the period of rapid modernization during the 1960s to 1980s, when the authoritative South Korean government promoted uniformity and the Western standard of development while simultaneously stifling individual creativity, people continued to turn to shamans in times of crisis or uncertainty, relying on the power of luck to avoid misfortune.²

Shamanism saw a resurgence in the early 21st century in the arts as South Korea gradually globalized after the end of the Cold War in 1989 and established a democratic government shortly after. Authoritative values in the past gave way to diversity and cultural heterogeneity, and the contemporary art world moved towards a “global pattern of flow and resistances” rather than the dichotomous view of center versus periphery.³ Artists started to take notice of the potential of shamanism as an apt alternative to a strictly rational, scientific worldview. Their reexaminations found a more fluid, empathetic approach to considering human nature. This new understanding of shamanism was a central theme in the 2014 Seoul MediaCity Biennale, titled Ghosts, Spies, and Grandmothers. The Biennale’s director, Park Chan-kyong, focused on marginalized yet potent entities in society. He explained his decision to juxtapose three seemingly disparate figures:

Spies seen in the movies look attractive, but “spies” (gancheob) in the news are terrifying.⁴ One should worship god in ancestral ceremonies but stay far away from the ghosts you encounter during the night. Grandmothers should be respected, but in reality, they are expelled outside the huge wave of praise for the young. You notice them sometimes, but they are generally difficult to spot; or one does not wish to see them, or should not see them. They are skilled in silence and possess top-level information. Hence they cry out, confess, disclose or testify. They easily become paradoxical beings according to the situation.⁵

The convergence of the three symbolic figures—ghost, spy, and grandmother—underscores Asia’s ongoing effort to transcend forcefully inserted Westernized influences and reclaim its original heritage by positing a “modernity against modernity.”⁶ Park’s theme was not incidental; it was the culmination of his own documentary, Manshin: Ten Thousand Spirits (2013), which unraveled the complex and ambivalent emotions surrounding shamanism in Korea through the life of Kim Keum-hwa, the country’s most renowned manshin (shaman). The predominantly female demographic of Korean shamans ties to the figure of the “Grandmother,” who venerates shamanistic deities or “Ghosts,” and who has witnessed the tumultuous 20th-century history in Korea, where many formative and socio-political events were often centered around “Spies.”

Shamanism experienced another resurgence during the 2020 Covid pandemic. In 2021, the Ilmin Museum of Art opened their exhibition entitled Fortune Telling, which provided an outlet for exploring and processing collective anxieties in a time marked by uncertainty. The exhibition drew on shamanistic practices as well as traditional East Asian philosophies, including the concept of yin and yang, and the five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water), which comprised the fundamental categories in Chinese cosmology to understand the universe. The harmony and balance of these forces were thought to govern the natural world and human life. This exhibition exemplified how what was once seen as occult has been recontextualized in contemporary art as a way to bring comfort to the audience. As part of the show, a shaman with an art educational background produced a museum audio guide and artists invited participants to engage in saju readings (fortune-telling based on one’s birth date) as part of a performance.

The exhibition space was divided into two sections, “fate” and “counseling,” suggesting that for the curators, these concepts are interrelated: fate serves as the foundation of existence, while counseling offers therapeutic guidance in navigating fate and finding inner peace. Indeed, the exhibition is also living proof that what was once viewed as an occult practice of communicating with otherworldly entities became more accessible with the popularization of diluted forms such as saju, tarot readings, and face readings—practices that were considered safer and relatively more scientific—grounded in statistical reasoning rather than ghostly communications. Fortune Telling offered visitors a way to reflect on the emotional and psychological challenges of the pandemic, bridging ancient philosophies with contemporary concerns (fig. 3). This renewed interest in shamanism and traditional cosmology highlights how people seek comfort and meaning from deeply rooted cultural practices, especially during times of crisis.

Although shamans remain somewhat intimidating figures due to their perceived possession by spirits, artist Haegue Yang offers a more sympathetic interpretation. She notes that “today’s shamanism has been tainted by a culture of unscientific superstition or prayers for personal prosperity. In the past, shamanistic rituals (guts) were performed for communal well-being—to bring rain, end droughts, or ensure the safe return of those who had left their homes.”⁷ Her ongoing project, Mesmerizing Mesh (2021–), folds and cuts pieces of traditional Korean paper, evoking symmetrical ritual paper props used by shamans (figs. 5-6). The mass of works explores shamans as intermediaries between the divine and humanity, although the artist laments that shamans themselves often remain marginalized.⁸

However, Yang also poignantly points out that the preservation of tradition may have political connotations, particularly in parts of Europe, where it is sometimes used to justify exclusion and anti-immigration sentiments.⁹ Nonetheless, many non-Western countries, especially in the Global South, share similar sentiments toward shamanism as those illustrated above in the case of South Korea, including an ambivalence toward rooting their historical narratives that were once superimposed by imperialism and capitalism. The quest to reconnect with their roots remains ongoing.

Understanding shamanism and its reception in the contemporary world is far from straightforward. It is a complex and multi-layered process, entangled with the legacies of imperialism, questions of legitimacy and self-doubt, and the unpredictable nature of future prediction. Despite this complexity, the exhibitions and participating artists highlight the potency of shamanism as a transgressive and healing force embedded in the lives of many. By looking into works on both institutional and individual levels, Korean contemporary art in the context of shamanism deals with defying logical explanations and offering a path for those seeking meaning in an increasingly uncertain world.

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Hamin Kim (she/her) is a PhD student at Boston University whose research centers on modernization and globalization in Korean art from the 20th century onwards, with particular emphasis on Korea’s cultural exchange with Japan and the United States and the history of performance in Korea.

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1. The survival of Korean Shamanism amidst the influx of Christianity is detailed in Oak, Sung-Deuk, “Healing and Exorcism: Christian Encounters with Shamanism in Early Modern Korea.” Asian Ethnology 69, no. 1 (2010): 95-128.

2. Although sporadically, artists continued to investigate shamanism in their practices during the 20th century. The most salient efforts were made in the Minjung (People’s) arts movement during the 1980s but also through individual efforts including the photographer Lee Gapchul’s Confliction and Reaction series (1990-2002) as well as Lee Seungtaek’s Wind series (1967- ) etc.

3. Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 46-47.

4. In the original Korean statement, Park differentiates between Western “spies” and “spies (gancheobs).” The former evoke Hollywood’s James Bond archetype—sleek and glamorous—while the latter refer specifically to North Korean operatives who infiltrate South Korean society to steal sensitive information. These North Korean spies are often portrayed as petty and unrefined, embodying a dirtier, more sinister image.

5. Park Chan-kyong, “Why ‘Ghosts, Spies, and Grandmothers’?”, Accessed September 23, 2024, http://archive.mediacityseoul.kr/2014/en/introduction/2014theme/ghost-spy-grandmother/.

6. This is not to suggest that all Western influences introduced in Asia were imposed by force. However, the remnants of colonialism, as opposed to voluntary cultural exchanges, have left more profound impacts on later generations. My aim is to highlight the involuntary aspects of Western influence rather than to dismiss Western influence in Asia as wholly negative. Additionally, the phrase “modernity against modernity” is derived from the original Korean title of the Seoul MediaCity Biennale.

7. Unless otherwise indicated, translations are the author’s. Jaeyeon Cho, “Double Souls, Dialectic of the Truth: SMK – Statens Museum for Kunst Haegue Yang solo exhibition, Double Soul,” Art in Culture [translated from Korean], April 2022, 166-67.

8. “Beyond Paganism and Shamanism: Haegue Yang in Conversation with Kirsty Bell on Mesmerizing Mesh”, July 2, 2022, Haegue Yang, accessed on September 2, 2024, http://www.heikejung.de/list_of%20texts/KirstyBellHaegueYangMM.pdf. 

9. “Haegue Yang: Handles, Haegue Yang Interview,” W Magazine [translated from Korean] (November 4, 2019), https://www.wkorea.com/2019/11/04/%EB%A7%9D%EA%B0%81%EC%9D%98-%EC%86%90%EC%9E%A1%EC%9D%B4/ (accessed on September 20, 2024).