Empathic Propaganda is a satirical-subversive series of large-scale paintings, drawings, and silkscreens in an assimilated North Korean aesthetic. I appropriate small-format propaganda posters, enlarging them onto canvas, replacing a central figure with my self-portrait, and substituting the original martial slogans with alternative quotations translated into Korean.
Since Korea’s division in 1945, North Koreans have lived under both outward isolation and a constant internalized state of emergency, a reality reflected in the enduring visual formulas my work transforms and parodies. The inserted quotations reveal North Korea’s self-conception while the adapted self-portraits enact a speculative experiment: imagining oneself within a worldview alien to liberal-democratic assumptions.
Deliberately provocative yet empathetically exploratory, the project embraces a calculated aesthetic risk—challenging Western notions of art while interrogating the boundaries of ideological understanding.
