"The Principle of Things": Materiality and Morality from Dutch Still Life to Korean Chaekgeori

In connecting still-life paintings from the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic to the culture of eighteenth-century Joseon Korea, Irene Choi's research explores anxieties about material wealth and everyday objects in both the Protestant Netherlands and the Confucian Joseon dynasty (1392-1910). She considers the still-life genre not only as a series of conventions in painting, but more importantly as a mode of exchange through and in representation that allows us to position late Joseon Korea within the larger artistic network of the early modern era between Europe and East Asia.

Irene Choi graduated from the University of British Columbia in 2015 with honours in Art History and a minor in English Literature. Her research focuses on the Early Modern encounter between Europe and East Asia in Art History. She is also interested in the relationship between language and art such as the relationship between different languages—Asian and European—and their effects on visual culture.