(Translated by Park Hyun)

Reading Sol’s blog post, we felt strangely liberated by this paragraph describing what could be considered an obvious reality. That’s when we realized, although this is a topic that frequently comes up when the “poor people” of the art world hang out, we’d rarely seen it discussed in public with such candor. What makes class so evident yet so hushed up in the art world? Perhaps it’s because those who need to “spend all their time and energy taking care of 1 to 10” don’t even have any strength left to speak, but to us, it seemed clear that there was something going on beyond that—some sort of concealment.

With that in mind, ma-te-ri-al decided to invite two contemporary artists to a conversation: Han Sol, the author of the quoted blog and an artist who has portrayed the struggles of young women and queer folks in precarious conditions, and Vika Kirchenbauer, an artist from a working-class background who has addressed her own class experiences and the matter of class in contemporary art. One is from the familiar Korean city of Seoul, while one is from Berlin, the city everyone dreams of these days. We posed some questions that explore the true nature of class that penetrates the experiences of these two artists in completely different cities, attempting to find clues as to what contemporary art has been missing.

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Hyun (ma-te-ri-al):⠀Hi, Vika and Sol! Thank you for agreeing to be part of the conversation. Let me start with a question for Vika based on Sol’s blog excerpt. As far as I know, education is a lot more affordable & a lot less cutthroat in Europe/Germany than in Korea. Do you feel like gatekeeping nonetheless works similarly in the German art world you are part of?

Vika: ⠀Across Germany, out of 100 children whose parents did not study, just 27 start university. In contrast, 79 out of every 100 children whose parents did study, start university – almost three times as many. Although studying is quite affordable in Germany, there are many deterrents in place. Traditionally, after primary school – so when children are about 10 or 11 years old – it was decided what type of secondary school children would attend. There were three branches of schools, and only the top branch – comparable to a high school – qualified the students to enroll in university. Often, if children came from households where family members were not academically trained, they were sent to the lower two branches of secondary schools where children were trained for professions rather than for studies. By now, this system has changed in most federal states, but it has marked the country heavily and continues to do so. In my family, out of all my relatives, I was the first person to attend high school and study. I knew that my parents were worried about my attending high school, and shame certainly played a role. They were ashamed that they wouldn’t be able to help me with my homework if I had questions.

Now, I am a professor at an art university, and from what I observe, students from working-class backgrounds are much more likely to study art education than fine art, although even that is unlikely since few feel they belong in “art”. Students from less economically comfortable backgrounds are generally not in a position to gamble on future success and they know that they will need to earn money right after graduation. So for those few who muster the courage to enroll for art-related studies, becoming an art teacher often works as a good compromise. But even for that small minority of students from working class backgrounds who study fine art with the aim of becoming full-time practicing artists, it is quite difficult. In the world of contemporary art, it is mostly young people from more comfortable backgrounds who establish themselves in circles that demand underpaid or unpaid work in order just to get in. Many art school graduates without the convenience of a financial security net abandon their own work, succumbing to exhaustion working for more established artists under precarious working conditions.

How would you describe the situation in Korea, Sol?

Sol: ⠀In Korea, higher education has been standardized since the 1970s, making the path from high school to university seemingly less challenging than in Germany. However, as I realized while reading your story, the ghosts of the past still haunt the high schools, with traditionally renowned schools still maintaining their reputation for sending many students to prestigious universities. Above all, due to Korea’s intense competition and overdeveloped private tutoring industry, rich areas have higher rates of admission to prestigious universities. Around 2014-2015, I heard from a TA at Seoul National University’s Art Department that for their major, over 70% of new students were from the Gangnam area (the most expensive & educationally competitive neighborhood in Korea).“Acceptance to Seoul National University Most Common in Gangnam & Seocho… Regional Imbalance Aggravated,” No Cut News, Oct. 18, 2022. https://www.nocutnews.co.kr/news/5834462. Since then, the proportion of students from Gangnam entering Seoul National University has continued to rise. I believe this trend is not unrelated to the neoliberal wealth gap that has been intensifying in Korea since around 2010.

You mentioned that in Germany, students from working-class backgrounds often choose art education as their major. In Korea, I feel like the paths are actually quite varied: webtoon artists, broadcasting jobs, starting private businesses, commissioned sculpture production, tattoo artists, etc. While I was in school, students from less privileged financial backgrounds commonly worked part-time at art tutoring schools. Those who couldn’t even do that worked for lower wages at coffee shops, convenience stores, bars, or even adult entertainment establishments. Similar to what you said, Vika, those from relatively stable backgrounds tended to apprentice under famous artists or professors.

Nevertheless, since the 1990s, a university degree in Korea has basically become something anyone could obtain. This creates an illusion that once you enter school, equal opportunities and equal lives await. No one ever told us that we’d actually be thrown onto the grid of social classes under the façade of freedom. I’ve heard countlessly that only about 10% of art students survive in the art world. When I first entered school, I naively thought that survival would depend more on individual capability and willpower rather than economic circumstances. I was quite clueless regarding how widely our life paths could diverge after our shared starting point. Many talented and seemingly healthy friends I met in university were seeing psychiatrists by graduation, either giving up their art to make a living or suffering from slow progress while trying to manage both.

It took me 8 years to get my undergraduate degree. Even though I wasn’t a stellar student, I wonder if it would have taken that long if I didn’t have to double as an art tutor. When I went to graduate school, I started underground sex work alongside the tutoring job. Although it wasn’t solely for financial reasons, I definitely felt like it was the only way I could afford to produce enough to debut as an artist. In graduate school, there were students from far more affluent backgrounds than I imagined, creating a significant gap with the handful of poor students. While some commuted from the safety of their homes, some secretly stayed at school to save on rent. However, when we brought our work to class, we only discussed what we saw in the artwork itself without even imagining or asking about the external circumstances that led to its creation. I found this concealment quite strange, and it’s something I’ve consistently felt in the art world, where the gap in glamor is substantial.

Hyun: ⠀Thank you very much for your engaging responses. Vika, I’m curious whether there are cultural barriers you have noticed, along with the financial barriers Sol has discussed. I’d also like to know if class is so rarely talked about in the German art scene as well. I find it frustrating that while “identity” has become such a huge topic for artists, class is rarely discussed as a part of identity. I consider class as one of the most important building blocks of my identity. As a filmmaker, however, it’s also extremely hard for me to think of ways to seamlessly incorporate class consciousness into my films without feeling somewhat inadequate or… maybe, let’s say, uncool. It’s always easier for me to talk about being queer than to talk about having been poor, (similar to what Didier Eribon admitted to in Returning to Reims). Perhaps neoliberalism’s biggest success was in coupling the ideas of hard work and deservingness with someone’s status so strongly that it became completely impossible to discuss class without shame… and I feel like the art world is also hardly willing to experiment on that front. What do you think, Vika?

Vika: ⠀There are certainly many co-existing spheres of contemporary art in Germany, and particularly in Berlin, some of which intersect while others don’t. Many of these spheres diverge in many aspects—some more international than others, some more politically engaged than others, some more queer than others, some less white than others, etc.

I would say, however, that—despite these important differences—a disavowal of class privilege persists in most of these coexisting spheres of art. Class background is a lot less visible than other identity markers can be, which in turn allows many to disregard their inherited economic privilege in order to stay attached to an ignorant notion of merited success. So yes, here class is also rarely talked about, and if it is, it is often rich kids misidentifying as workers because they brand themselves as poor artists. This infuriates me, because they omit one important aspect: art is their own choice over other options that they do possess, and that would guarantee them a higher income. Workers and people from the poverty classes, in contrast, do not have such choices, they do not choose to be unwealthy.

Another important condition that limits conversations and perspectives on art and class is based on the societal function of contemporary art as a marker of class distinction. This produces a certain paradox, to begin with: once a person from a less privileged class background has achieved a significant platform within contemporary art, they are—by necessity—no longer confined to working-class life and have experienced social ascension. This means that contemporary art both produces and presupposes notions of upward mobility. Distance plays an important part in this. For an artist socialised within a class socially considered lower to become legitimised and “visible” within the artistic field, it is a prerequisite that they first establish a significant distance to their class origins by obtaining distinctive educational and cultural capital. Passing within the field of art requires knowledge of its codes, as well as specific social skills. In the cultural context, this can mean: Who does one kiss on the cheek? Do the cheeks touch or not? Who do you hug? Who do you shake hands with? Who do you smile and nod to without interfering?

Once legitimised, included, and elevated onto the platforms to which the field of art “gives visibility”, the artist gains an outlook from a class position quite distanced and distinguished from the one originally inhabited. The distance to one’s own class background need not be permanent or absolute, but possible. One may return but must be able to leave again; one must be able to move in society rather than be stuck in it. The skill of code-switching between different social contexts speaks of a kind of mobility that stands in stark contrast to how inter-class immobility often marks working-class realities. In that sense, mobility itself can be understood as a marker of distance, a distance that is not necessarily static but can be established at will.

Distance is considered a prerequisite for seeing, analysing, and reflecting, as well as for critical or artistic engagement. In contrast, life in the working and poverty classes is often characterised by the absence of cushioning against violence: or to put it differently, it is precisely the lack of distance that makes bodies intimately vulnerable to politics and its effects. So by necessity, within the realms of contemporary art, one can only be presented with the artistic perspective of somebody who was not crushed by the violence of a class-based society. It is the position of someone for whom, despite obstacles, things have gone relatively well. If things hadn’t gone well, the person would not have a recognised artistic practice and consequently would remain unseen in that field. Visibility within contemporary art is predicated on personal success, not on collective politics. As difficult as things may have been on the way, in relation to class, contemporary art produces winners’ stories and little else.

In such cases, I would maintain that by having become a recognised artist, one’s class reality has changed—in terms of habits, possibilities, education, contacts, and mobility—and I find this important, even if, at present, this may not reflect economically. This realisation can be painful and isolating, especially because—and I feel similarly here—class may be the identity aspect most central to how one has learned to experience the world and oneself. So, somewhat absurdly, experiencing class mobility can make it difficult to talk about class, because there might be a sense of betrayal of one’s origins, or a sense that one is not in a position to talk about things one is no longer a part of – despite being so deeply conditioned by them.

Sol, how would you also describe your relation to class concerning your current and past class positionings? Another question I keep thinking about: is access to contemporary art the problem, or the social conception of contemporary art itself?

Sol: ⠀I agree that contemporary art both produces and presupposes notions of class mobility. Based on this, I consider myself a transclass as well. Although I’ve been exposed to economic hardships and remain connected to family members who remind me of my background, I have acquired educational and cultural capital as a highly educated person in the contemporary art world, gained at least some recognition through a few exhibitions, and built some network in the process.

I think, however, that class mobility presupposed in art isn’t achieved through linear and gradual progress, and that various factors intersect to make the transclass process fragmented. I personally think my position in the art world is quite complex. I could only gain access to a funding program at the age of 30, which is also when I held my first solo exhibition, but there were talented and ambitious peers who couldn’t even do that. Although I entered a prestigious university in Seoul, I struggled with living expenses and student loans with my family practically bankrupt. Although I chose art despite its distance from a stable life, behind that choice was also the expectation of my mother, a poor housewife who hoped for my social “success.” Some years, I was able to seize exhibition opportunities with all my might, while other years passed unremarkably amid the anxiety that I could slip into failure anytime, as well as the feeling that still nobody knew me. Or rather, it might be easier to count the times I felt like I was an actual insider during all those activities. I was often split between the feeling that I was heading to success alone with my poor family left behind and the fear that I might never fully belong in that world I was heading to. I think this sense of splittingChantal Jaquet, Transclasses: A Theory of Social Non-reproduction. Jaquet, referencing Didier Eribon, explains that Bourdieu formulated the concept of ‘fractured habitus’ to address this kind of ambivalence. grows in proportion to the gap in class mobility one experiences.

While transclasses are characterized by mobility and code-switching, the code-switching isn’t done in a way where you neatly delete one side and move over to the opposite side. Chantal Jaquet explains in Transclasses: A Theory of Social Non-reproduction that social ascension might be far from growth or promotion but rather is an experience of a long fall into hell. A transclass is an entity at the boundary of inside and outside, existing in the gap that inevitably produces mental turbulence, never fully able to assimilate even in their destination. Like how Didier Eribon ultimately returned to his hometown Reims, which he had tried his best to escape from, transclasses encounter the haunting of their past in some way, neither able to erase the past nor settle completely in the future.

I think one can still choose art while simultaneously being unable to “choose to be poor” since even for people from very poor classes, ways to pursue a career in art are not nonexistent. Sometimes the desire to escape from dissatisfaction with their background leads working-class people to choose something high-class coded, such as art. It’s just that they have to accept excessive sacrifices. I guess there are just groups that are “highly likely to be blocked” from the art world, rather than completely blocked. The problem is that amidst these difficulties, gaps are created in terms of how one chooses to position themselves or is positioned in the art world, as well as how much of an insider they can become in the art world. And although class is not the only factor, it is persistently having influence.

On one side of the art world, artists have their work traded for large sums at the Frieze Art Fair, become exclusive artists at galleries, win art prizes at a young age, enter national/public museums, or quickly make their name overseas. On the other side, there are artists who continue exhibiting for years without ever getting noticed or who can barely hold exhibitions once every few years. I think, in Korea, there is a tremendous gap between artists in terms of their experiences and the opportunities they have. For example, among the few exhibitions I saw this year, there was Illigally Extended B&B, an interesting exhibition that had class as one of its underlying themes and whose methodologies and forms captured the theme very well.Illegally Extended B&B (Kim Sohee & Kim Jiyoon, Aug. 16 – Sep. 8, 2024 at Rainbow Cube). The exhibition included interviews of people living temporary lives who need to frequently relocate, beds made of plastic sheets, accounts of the artists’ nomadic experiences, and their hopes and desires as artists amidst all this. But it seemed like this exhibition wasn’t as noticed as I expected in & around the art world. I thought about this for a while. It probably also didn’t reach Hyun, considering her comment about how the art world seems to lack any will to discuss class. Although my artistic themes also revolve around queerness, I have to admit that while there’s much focus on queerness as an “identity,” the queerness that clearly exists within the theme of class seems to escape attention and often goes unnoticed in the first place.

Anyhow, there are clear gaps that exist in the art world, and even though class is not the only factor, the problem is that the art world acts like the influence of class is nonexistent—I guess this is the frustration that all three of us share.

The ivory tower of the class spectrum seems unimaginably high in the world of contemporary art (though I can’t know for sure since I’ve never reached the top), and contemporary art is more easily positioned in the realm of “sophistication” than any other medium. This might also play an important role in creating the enormous gaps and the resulting sense of splitting. So to answer your last question, I think the problems of access to contemporary art and its social conception operate simultaneously as sources of difficulty within this context of “sophistication.”

Hyun: ⠀What Vika said about artists from lower social classes inevitably gaining distance from their original class upon entering the art world and what Sol said about how they still experience “splitting” and opportunity gaps while never being able to become complete insiders both really hit home. Regarding the exhibition Illegally Extended B&B that Sol mentioned, although I wasn’t able to visit in time, I happened to know one of the artists and I followed it with much interest. I also got the impression, like Sol, that the exhibition was quite unnoticed in the art world, and I remember suspecting this might be due to the theme of class. Sol mentioned that the exhibition’s methodology successfully captured the class-related themes, which I’d also found impressive, but perhaps that very aspect made the exhibition look like an outsider, which might be due to lack of the “distance” that Vika mentioned. Perhaps, in the art world, when someone works with the theme of class but refuses the necessary methodological “distance,” they’re immediately ostracized…?

But then I wonder: in contemporary art, is distance so important when dealing with identity or minority issues other than class? In light of Vika’s question, perhaps the concept of contemporary art itself is the problem in that sense. Perhaps its desire to become a means of distinction has made concealment of class an inevitable requirement for being recognized as contemporary art.

I’m curious about your experience related to this, Vika. Even after gaining access to the contemporary art world, you’ve not only addressed your own class experiences in your work but also pointed out how contemporary art maintains distance from and conceals class. How was your experience creating and showing such work? Did you have any frustrations about how your work was received or discussed in the art world? I’d also like to know about your experience of observing other artists’ work—were there moments where you couldn’t help but think about class as you looked at other people’s work?

Sol: ⠀What Vika mentioned about London’s public institutions using admission fees to exclude lower classes from contemporary art is truly shocking. It’s also shocking that German museums still have expensive admission fees. I think these exclusionary art practices clearly form the basis of the concept of the “modern artist.” Throughout European art history, art has mainly served as a means to satisfy bourgeois vanity. Furthermore, art has been frequently used for right-wing political views not just at the class level but also at the national level, which often swayed the art world’s overall atmosphere. For example, in America, Jackson Pollock’s paintings were interpreted as rooted in anti-communist, liberalist ideologies and were thus promoted during the anti-communist era. In Korea during the 1980s, monochrome abstract paintings were characterized as representing the unity of Koreans, traditionally dubbed the “people of white clothing,” and the country promoted such art by awarding prizes to monochrome painters.

In recent times, many multinational corporations are using art to conceal their ruthless and violent capitalist exploitation practices. An American pharmaceutical giant was laundering their reputation by sponsoring reputable art museums and having their name displayed in museums, and Nan Goldin and her colleagues continued to protest against both the corporation and museums to expose this. Before this, since the 1990s, many corporations have been using art for reputation laundering, which became the target of artists critical of institutions. The art world seems to be corrupt beyond imagination and is quite easily used for and contributes to maintaining dominant ideologies and ruling classes.

As a result, as Vika discussed, one must either be very wealthy or receive government support to continue creating critical work. However, just like government support in Germany is deteriorating, Korea is also experiencing severe reductions in public funding. Since the current government took office, they have dramatically cut the budget for culture and arts, with the budget for art educators reportedly decreased by 86% in two years. The film industry has also suffered major budget cuts, with the number of people receiving support from the Korean Film Council halved this year and small independent film festivals facing the risk of disappearing.

Regarding audience accessibility, admission fees aren’t really a significant barrier in Korea. Fees for national museums are at most the price of a coffee, and many private or alternative art spaces often don’t charge fees at all. Nevertheless, the concept of art still hinders public access, since art is perceived as difficult, incomprehensible, or reserved for the idle rich, making it less accessible for the public. And alternative exhibition spaces are often hard to know about unless you’re in the art scene. Due to these conceptual problems of accessibility, I’ve recently developed interest in documentaries. When ten million won can fund a week-long art exhibition or a 20-minute independent documentary film, the latter will attract at least three times more viewers.

I thoroughly agree with Hyun that one can easily be pushed outside of the art world when discussing class due to ‘distance’ being essential in contemporary art. For example, in Illegally Extended B&B that I mentioned, the artists displayed their work-related belongings that had been stored in temporary locations, piled in one corner of the exhibition space. This seemed to demonstrate how their belongings had to wander from place to place in temporary boxes because the artists lacked sufficient storage space and resources to pay rent. Other pieces also mostly utilized temporary and unstable materials and methods, like hand-stitched plastic sheets and paper scraps. The artists said that in their artistic practice, they poignantly felt the status quo where studios, exhibition spaces, and homes all had to be rented. I wondered whether such an exhibition would be able to maintain its critical significance when placed in an enormous, refined white cube gallery, in an officially recognized institution. And I also wondered—how many times have I seen something like this in official art museums?

Therefore, as Hyun and Vika said, it seems easier to be pushed away from contemporary art when dealing explicitly with class more than any other identity. On the other hand, when one tries to maintain artistic form and authority, the theme of class often becomes diluted. I remember worrying about whether I was too explicitly discussing class issues during my first solo exhibition. Looking back later, I realized that perhaps due to that worry, it turned out too abstract. The exhibition was titled There’s Always Tomorrow, featuring a performance where five different characters ran an obstacle race at midnight in the residential alley where the exhibition space was located. It was a guerrilla performance imagined as a small festival for precariats who must always postpone everything until
“tomorrow” and run on the conveyor belt late into the night like ghosts. While I wasn’t trying to prevent the exhibition from evoking the theme of class, there were layers that didn’t fully reveal the theme unless the viewer read the artist’s statement. Perhaps, at that time, I feared that presenting the theme in a direct, easily recognizable form would immediately block me from entering the world of art. I also wanted to find a balance between political themes and aesthetic concerns to protest against the art world’s long-standing dichotomy dividing the two. As a result, I think the theme of class wasn’t very clearly expressed in that work. From then on, I’ve often felt disappointed about how realistic and political discussions frequently had to be adjusted or diluted to maintain certain art-like forms. That’s why I’ve recently started working with documentary format to be able to say more.

Hyun: ⠀Thanks to both of you, I was able to have a second-hand look on the walls faced by artists attempting to address class issues in the contemporary art world. I’m sure there’s much more to discuss, but sadly, we have space constraints. To wrap up, could I ask both of you to share, based on our conversation so far, what changes you hope to see in the contemporary art world, and what you’d like to accomplish as you continue your work?

Vika: ⠀If I could only suggest one change to how art institutions operate, it would be free entrance at all times. Today, contemporary art remains in a double-bind between a rhetoric in which it, on one hand, wants and needs the public, and, on the other hand, sticks to concrete measures put in place to devalue or exclude part of the same public. Admission prices to publicly funded institutions in Europe and North America are often higher than what many people can afford to spend per day as part of their disposable income. In Berlin, for instance, regular entrance to public art institutions can be more expensive than a meal and a drink in a restaurant. This prevailing restriction of access to art, its discourses and its concerns, has – not surprisingly – influenced public opinion negatively. Therefore, the defunding of art institutions and education as witnessed over the last decades cannot be made sense of without taking into account contemporary art’s longstanding history of elitism. This elitism in contemporary art and the public response through budget cuts form a full circle in the ways in which they further produce elitism in the field. This is a vicious cycle that needs to be broken.

I’m writing this response a few days after the city of Berlin announced a 50% cut on its subsidies for artists’ studios, amongst many more deep budget cuts in culture and art. Quite obviously, those most impacted will be artists who do not come from money and who will be less likely to sustain their respective practices. Without subsidies and funding programmes that make it possible for artists from less privileged environments to build a practice, and without welcoming a broad audience from all social backgrounds, however, contemporary art risks slipping into public irrelevance.

In the German context right now, as I mentioned, state-funded institutions are currently additionally threatened by their own self-righteousness and curtailing of free speech and artistic freedom, mostly related to the war in Palestine and Lebanon. This latter political context is what concerns me the most right now, and I hope to find a way to incorporate the political questions around it in my upcoming works.

Sol: ⠀Although it’s not easy to imagine what to hope for after the dark conversations we’ve had, but to try, I hope we can create situations where art can overcome its elitism and actively engage with its surroundings. Anything can become contemporary art medium-wise, and we constantly encounter things in everyday life or in other forms of art that resemble or even surpass contemporary art. Yet they aren’t called art because they lack elements that the institution requires. For something to be called art, it needs certain formal requirements―exhibition space, artist statement, reviews from critics, institutional sponsorship, etc. But I often feel like these things, which are nothing more than formal tools, ironically have become the entire definition of art. It seems like anything can gain the status of contemporary art just by having these institutional forms, regardless of its content or significance. I often encounter very contemporary art-like works while watching independent documentaries, but it’s as if the documentary world and the art world exist in separate spheres as if they’re invisible to each other. Perhaps they’re just pretending not to see each other, each encased in glass walls. There are numerous works experimenting with hybrid genres in the independent documentary scene, and videos in the art scene have similar trends. Likewise, the political and social themes of recent interest in the art scene are topics that have long been actively discussed in the independent documentary scene. Despite often telling the same stories, films are presented and discussed only within film circles, and art in art circles. Only a lucky few are introduced in both fields.

I nonetheless think each field has its own roles. Sometimes experiments difficult in documentary format are possible in art, while documentaries can tell stories that art can’t fully capture. But as someone with a foot in both camps, I can’t help but hope for a more frequent encounter between the two fields. Documentary and art are just one example―I think many more different things can intersect.

Currently, I’m trying to address gender transition through documentary and performance, in the context of Korea’s political economy and media representation. Going forward, I want to continue to speak out publicly as I move between art and documentary, so that I can create more opportunities to meet people with shared interests just as this conversation did. When you don’t hide what you’re interested in discussing, I think you eventually meet people whom you can talk about it with. Just like how I’m having this valuable conversation with both of you who keenly address the issues of class. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. I hope we can talk again someday.