Mikhail Karikis : SeaWomen

26 May-8 Jul 2012

Overview

SeaWomen is a film and sound installation by Mikhail Karikis focusing on a fast vanishing community of female workers living on the South Korean island of Jeju – a jagged patch of black volcanic rock floating in the Pacific Ocean between the mainland and Japan. The film depicts the community of working women called haeneyo (sea-women), now in their 70s and 80s, who dive to great depths with no oxygen supply to catch sea-food, collect seaweed and find pearls. This is an ancient female profession, now on the verge of disappearance, but which by 1970 became the main economic force on the island, establishing a matriarchal system in an otherwise male-dominated Confucian society.