Dr. Soo-Min Shim Appointed JNCCA Post-Doctoral Fellow

I first came to Asian Art History as an undergraduate student at the University of Sydney. It was there that I had the opportunity to be mentored by Dr. Yvonne Low, who supervised my Honours.

That project began my research into contemporary art in Korea, particularly Korean women’s art, and really shaped the direction of everything that followed. Dr. Low inspired me to continue with Asian Art History and continues to inspire me today. 

I later completed my Ph.D. at the Australian National University with Dr. Chaitanya Sambrani as my supervisor. My doctoral research focused on the artistic, cultural and social impact of contemporary Korean artists working from and within the Anglophone West, particularly artists based in Australasia.

That research expanded my thinking beyond Korea alone and into broader questions around diaspora, regionalism and transnational East Asian art histories. 

A question that continues to drive my work is: whose voices are missing in the current research on contemporary art in East Asia, and why?

I’m interested in how attention to those absences can fracture or complicate monolithic narratives of East Asian art history.

How do we write more fluid, generative art histories that foreground the experiences of transnational minorities, including diaspora artists? How do regional connections across East Asia – particularly between the Korean peninsula, Japan and the broader Sinosphere – challenge rigid national narratives?

A major part of my current work focuses on gender and sexuality in contemporary South Korean art, including women’s artistic practices that remaincomparatively understudied, particularly within Anglophone scholarship.

I also hope that my research on queer contemporary art in South Korea opens up broader conversations around queer practice in Asia, where discussions of queerness are still often shaped through Euro-American contexts. 

I’ve actually been fortunate to be involved with JNCCA since 2022, teaching with the brilliant Dr. Minerva Inwald as her tutor for DART2311 Contemporary East Asian Art.

Minerva was the previous Post-Doctoral Fellow and someone I’ve always looked up to greatly. Through working with her, I was able to see firsthand the kinds of research, teaching and collaborations that the Fellowship could foster.

It’s such an honour to follow in her footsteps and become part of this intellectual community – although I certainly feel like I have very big shoes to fill.

The JNCCA’s commitment to critically engaged research aligns strongly with my own interest in writing alternative forms of art history in and of East Asia.

Much of my work focuses on artists and histories that have been marginalised within dominant narratives, so there’s a strong connection there. 

Teaching has also always been deeply important to me. Asian Art History education is something I care about personally, and I’m excited to have more opportunities to engage, challenge and hopefully inspire students at UNSW.

As someone who identifies as Asian-Australian, JNCCA’s support for Asian Studies in Australia is also personally significant. I hope to contribute to scholarship that expands contemporary art history beyond dominant Euro-American frameworks, and to bring that ethos into my research, teaching and advocacy.

From September to December 2026, I’ll be undertaking a research residency at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea in Seoul.

This will be a really important opportunity for me to develop my first book project, which focuses on gender and sexuality in contemporary South Korean art.

I’m also excited about continuing collaborative and editorial work across the field, including my role on the editorial board of Palgrave Macmillan’s Contemporary East Asian Visual Cultures, Societies, and Politics series.

More broadly, I hope to continue building conversations across disciplines, communities and borders – with artists, curators, researchers and students.

I think contemporary Korean art remains comparatively understudied within East Asian art history in Australia, and I hope this fellowship can be a meaningful step toward helping to expand that field.