My research examines transformations in Buddhist art over the longue durée, from antiquity to the contemporary period, across China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. I study images and monuments not as isolated objects, but through their patrons, ritual uses, movements, and the political, social, and religious contexts in which they acquire meaning.
The different corpora are approached through their inscriptions, materiality, ritual practices, patronage networks, and the circulation of forms among East Asian societies.
Artistic continuities beyond dynastic rupture, royal patrons, the role of court women, inscriptions, religious policies, and image production from late Koryŏ to early Chosŏn.
Bhaisajyaguru Buddha Triad · Chosŏn, 1565 · National Museum of Korea · KOGL Type 1 (attribution).
The Buddhist image is studied as an object activated through ritual practices and dispositifs. Sweet Dew paintings 甘露圖 provide a particularly rich field for analyzing the emergence, function, and performativity of images.
Detail of a gamnodo, replica of an eighteenth-century work · Daderot / Wikimedia Commons · CC0.The circulation of artists, models, works, and practices between China, Korea, and Japan: Hangzhou–Dadu–Gaegyeong networks, the reception of Song and Yuan forms, the movement of objects, and the history of their preservation in collections.
The evolution and persistence of architectural forms, the siting of monasteries, and the history of stupas. The corpora distinguish Silla, Paekche, Koguryŏ, Grand Silla, Koryŏ, and Chosŏn, as well as the different functions of monuments.
Study of the Ten Kings 十王, the Buddhist afterlife, Avalokiteśvara, and processes of local adaptation of iconographic models. This research notably connects Korean and Vietnamese traditions.
Six of the Ten Kings of Hell · Chosŏn, 1798 · LACMA / Wikimedia Commons · public domain.
Joint analysis of works, inscriptions, ritual texts, and material data; study of the rediscovery, reattribution, and provenance of Korean works preserved in Korea, Japan, Europe, and the United States.
Water-Moon Avalokiteśvara · Koryŏ, fourteenth century · Freer Gallery of Art / Wikimedia Commons · public domain.Pak Kurim 박그림 · Grim Park
Part of my research examines the relationships between Buddhism, contemporary art, gender, and queer identities in Korea. I am particularly interested in the work of Pak Kurim 박그림, who reworks the techniques and visual structures of Korean Buddhist painting to question identity, gender norms, and binary categories.
His Shimhodo 尋虎圖 series reinterprets the images of the ox-herding quest, Simudo 尋牛圖, by replacing the ox with the figure of the tiger. Transforming a traditional religious narrative into a contemporary language makes it possible to examine marginality, subjectivity, and the possibility of a queer iconography within inherited forms at the same time.
Reconsidering dynastic periodization through architectural continuities and the longue durée of monumental forms.
Connecting scriptural sources, legends, sacred topography, ritual practices, and the construction of the iconography.
Reconstructing networks of people, objects, and artistic models linking Song and Yuan China with Koryŏ.
Analyzing the emergence of Sweet Dew paintings through rituals, image use, and their performative dispositifs.
My approach combines art history, textual studies, epigraphy, material analysis, social history, fieldwork, and digital tools. The object is not merely described: it is situated within the network of relationships that determine its production, ritual activation, circulation, and reception.
The site provides access to structured corpora, maps, thematic studies, and ongoing work that progressively document these research themes.