The figure featured in “Friend” (1985) wears a look of determination as he glances back at the path he has taken, his hands tied together by rope, during his imprisonment at the Sangmudae Prison Camp in Gwangju. Regarding the works created by Hong Sungdam during the 1980s, art critic Lee Young-chul has remarked, “After Hong Sungdam experienced the Gwangju Democratization Movement in person, his oeuvre morphed to show qualitative advancement by capturing the image of defiant, militant laborers fighting against oppression, shifting from that of passive laborers. Also, his rich experiences of actual reality and his enhanced critical perspectives have enabled him to depict the struggling public using lively, realistic imagery, vibrant with life, instead of as
idealized icons.” Even though he is tied up, no trace of the negative energy of frustration from defeat can be found in the young man. Instead, his glaring eyes, large clenched fists, and look of determination indicate his uncompromising spirit and willingness to stand up against censorship and government oppression.
Hong Sungdam (b. 1955) graduated from the Department of Painting at Chosun University in 1979. He held multiple solo exhibitions including “1999 Prison Break, Hong Sungdam” at Gana Art Center in 1999; “Resistance and Meditation” at Queens Museum of Art, New York in 2003; “Hong Sungdam: White Light Black Water” at Gwangju Museum of Art in 2010; “Lives Drawn in Sorrow” and “Faces Engraved by Spring” at Mirum Gallery in 2018. He participated in various group exhibitions including “Outdoor Exhibition
with Requiem Mass in May” at Deudeul Riverside in 1980; “Anti-Torture” at Geurimmadang Min in 1987; “Reflecting on the Art of the 1980s” at Geurimmadang Min in 1991; “15 Years of Minjung Art: 1980-1994” at National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, currently MMCA, in 1994; “Farewell to Donggang River” at Gana Art Center in 1999; “The 1980’s Realism and the Age” at Gana Art Center in 2001; “A Thousand Years of Color: Forever RED” at Gana Art Center in 2004; “Dream of the Land” at Insa Art Center in 2011; and “From Vietnam to Berlin” at Asia Culture Center in 2018. He has authored From May to Unification (1990); A Flower of Blades for Liberation (1991); Standing on the Path Against the Uncomfortable Truth (2017); Sneakers Airplane (2017); and May (2018). In 1990, Amnesty International adopted him as one of its three prisoners of conscience for the year, and in 2014, Foreign Policy selected him as one of the 100 global thinkers of the year.
In 1979, Hong Sungdam organized the Gwangju Liberal Artists’ Association, the first local Minjung Art group in South Korea, alongside Baek Eunil, Choi Youl, Park Gwangsoo and Kim Sanha. In 1983, he opened the Gwangju Community Art School at the Gwangju Catholic Center to lead the Public Engraving Art Movement and strived to practice art in a form that directly communicates with the people and allow the people to create art themselves, so that art could contribute to social reform. Serving as a propagandist for the Gwangju Democratization Movement in the 1980s, Hong produced a print series that recorded in detail the atrocities committed by the government and resistance by Gwangju citizens. In 1989, he was arrested for sending a few slides of “History of National Liberation Movement,” a 77 meterlong hanging painting created in collaboration with other painters, to the Pyeongyang Festival of Youth and Students, which resulted in a three-year prison sentence. Despite the vicissitudes of his life, Hong remains an active painter whose main aim is to sharply criticize society through the language of art. Recently, he has drawn public attention through his works on the Sewol Ferry Sinking and satirical paintings of former president Park Geun-hye.
