The Shaman with the Fan

In South Korea, it is women who have most the power to be Shamans. Beyond the hyper visuality of the spectacle of trances during the rituals, the photographer looks at the mirror of the invisible. She wonders about the other side of the set, the "world of spirits" to which the shaman has access.

Fascinated by the light of the spirits, Flore-Aël Surun was bound to rub shoulders with the sparks of shamanism and to taste the bewitchings of dances between real worlds and unreal worlds where the Mudang (shaman) communicates with ten thousand spirits.

In all forms of human society, and from the beginning, certain men acted as an interface between society and the supernatural.

In South Korea Long demonized by Christian missionaries, condemned to clandestinity during the Japanese occupation, persecuted by the military government that followed the Korean War, Korean shamanism is now flourishing: some 300,000 mudangs officiated, now recognized as the repositories of traditions, rituals, dances and popular costumes.

The specificity of the Chamansime Coreen is due to the fact that it is the Women who have the power to be Shaman.

The mudang is supposed to communicate with the world of spirits by resorting to trance, ecstasy, song or tale. As a shaman, the mudang brings care, attracts fortune on such and such, communicates with the spirits of the dead.

There is no training to become mudang. It is made by heredity, from mother to daughter, or one is suffering from the "disease of the shamans." One receives then the spirit and one has to accept its destiny of mudang.

Beyond the hyper visuality of the spectacle of trances during the rituals, the photographer looks at the mirror of the invisible. She wonders about the other side of the set, the "world of spirits" to which the shaman has access. By erasing the reality of the play, by placing a filter on it that draws the remains of the contours of the real world, it takes us along with the shaman from the "other side" into the field of possibilities and tempts our imagination.

Listening to this imagination would give us access to an intelligence, an extremely developed wisdom. It is through the imagination that inspirations and intuitions arise. It also allows us to relate to the inner world of other people. Is this how the shaman gets his oracles? Is this how we can get our own answers and reinvent ourselves?