Jung Kangja, 'Untitled' (1980). Photo: © Jung Kangja Estate and Arario Gallery.Frieze Masters 2023 (October 11-15), held in London, made efforts to rediscover historically overlooked female artists. Its AWARE (Archives of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions) section brought together lesser-known female artists who worked between 1880 and 1980, such as Fay King Gold, Vera Molnár, and Tarsila do Amaral, alongside artists who have received acclaim in recent years.
ArtNet News has introduced the works of five female artists that should be spotlighted from this year’s Frieze Masters’ AWARE, including Jung Kangja (1942-2017). Jung was an experimental artist, and her politically charged experimental works faced censorship by the South Korean government in the 1970s, eventually causing her to go into exile in Singapore. One of her exhibited works, To Repress (1968), expresses the existence of oppressed women through the image of a heavy pipe compressing and mashing cotton. Jung’s works are currently part of Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, the 1960s-1970s, an exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York that will run until January 7, 2024.
Other artists featured in Artnet New’s article include Emily Kam Kngwarray (1910-1996), an Indigenous Australian painter; Paule Vézelay (1892-1984), a British abstract painter; Anna-Eva Bergman (1909-1987), a Norwegian abstract expressionist artist; Ethel Schwabacher (1903-1984), an abstract expressionist artist from New York; and Ethel Walker (1861-1951), a British artist associated with the New English Art Club known for her abstract art.
