For the 70th National Liberation Day, Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) presents an exhibition that passes through our historical and nationalistic tasks of independence, division, and unification, with ‘North Korea’ as its artistic keywords. It is significant because we need to put our heads together and discuss how we should represent, imagine, and connect North Korea as the very close but distant ‘other,’ before it is too late.
NK Project is comprised of 3 sections: A representation of North Korea’s visual culture at-a-glance including oil paintings, posters, and stamps, North Korea’s scenery and people depicted in the photographs of foreign artists, and video and installation art by South Korean artists depicting the subject of North Korea. For the first time shown in South Korea are parts of a collection of North Korean oil paintings from Dutch collector Ronald de Groen, posters from Dutch collector Willem van der Bijl, and stamps from Korean collector Donghuyn Shin. In the past North Korean art shown in South Korea solely focused on Chosŏnhwa (the traditional paintings of the Chosun era), this exhibition will be an opportunity to encounter diverse aspects of North Korean art seen through the broad spectrum of visual culture.
The exhibition introduces foreign photographers, Nick Danziger from the U.K., Eddo Hartman from Netherlands, and Wang Guofeng from China. Their photographs taken after 2010, which depict architecture of city, landscape, and people, present current scenes of North Korea. Representing South Korean artists, we have invited prominent figures who are well-known for producing North Korean themed works such as Ikjoong Kang, Chankyung Park, Suntag Noh, Yongbeck Lee, Sun Moo, who has been active in South Korean art world as a North Korean defector, and younger emerging artists Hayoon Kwon and Sojung Jun. Through these seven South Korean artists who combine their artistic imagination of North Korea with their sharp awareness of reality, we expect the spectrum of the exhibition NK Project will be broadened.
Through NK Project’s three sections that include the vision of the artist, perspectives of foreigner, and visual culture of North Korea, we try to suggest a mapping that three different views exchanges as if having a conversation with each other. Moreover, we expect the audience in the exhibition space can feel these exchanges of views, mix their own views with them, and actively expand and explore the discourse and ideas.
