Artistic Representation of City Images Through Iconic Sculptures: A Critical Analysis of the Memorial Sculpture Agape ‘Woni’s Mother’

The Woni's Mother Letters are historical records that encapsulate humanistic meanings of overcoming death and sublime love. Furthermore, these letters not only reveal a rare glimpse into a horizontal marital relationship during the Joseon Dynasty but also portray the affectionate emotions of a wife towards her husband through compelling expressions and a bold literary style. However, the Woni's Mother content inspired by these letters largely adheres to the idealized image of a Joseon-era woman as assigned by traditional gender roles, failing to break away from that framework. The Woni's Mother content has been developed and adapted into various forms, including three novels (450 Years’ Journey to the Outside World, Nungsohwa, and Woni's Mother), two operas, three musicals, one animated film, a live-action movie, dance performances, and even a theme park. Among these, the memorial sculpture Agape is a visual representation of the character “Dayoung” (Woni's Mother) as depicted in Kim Jang-dong's novel 450 Years’ Journey to the Outside World. This raises a question: what does the idealized female image of a traditional society signify for us today? It is crucial to reconsider whether the Woni's Mother content fosters any meaningful empathy beyond momentary stimulation or informational value for tourists. The competition for a distinctive image among cities has led to the installation of indiscriminate sculptures, which, rather than functioning as an artistic visual language, are merely indicative symbols of specific events, people, and cultural resources. The representation of a city through symbolic sculptures should not only give a certain meaning to the city, but also provide an understanding of its reality, and at the same time, provide a conceptual framework for examining the various contexts of social relations that surround it. In this context, this study critically examines the ‘Wonimama’ sculpture and compares the cases of Berlin, Germany and Wrocław, Poland, which have successfully constructed city images through the artistic reproduction of the sculpture.