Hojakdo (Tiger and Magpie)

In Korea, images combining a tiger and a magpie are everywhere. You encounter them constantly on the streets, and when visiting the permanent exhibitions of museums, you almost inevitably come across works featuring this pairing.

We came into contact with a wide range of tiger and magpie works across different places. The oldest surviving example with a verified production date is an anonymous work from 1592. Its evolution over the roughly 400 years since exhibits the same breadth, richness, and flexibility as a living ecosystem. As the most widely depicted subject in Minhwa (folk painting) of the late Joseon period, it forms an expansive, chameleon-like entity spanning a continuous spectrum from majestic court paintings to mass-produced satirical prints. There is no shortage of intriguing variations, including "leopard-like tigers" and "tigers that look unequivocally like cats." For instance, on one 18th-century JAR, blue-and-white porcelain with tiger and magpie design, despite bearing "Tiger and Magpie" in its name, a cat is curled up beneath the tree. Anyone looking at it would see a cat—so why does its name carry the tiger?

Moreover, magpies themselves are a common sight in Korea. As familiar, everyday birds on the Korean Peninsula, they can be seen simply hanging around even in the heart of metropolitan Seoul. Since magpies are rare to us, simply seeing these striking birds going about their lives in a big city was a source of wonder at first.

The world is spun from countless narratives.