FACING NORTH KOREA 2018

Meinblau Art Space, Berlin | 10 Nov – 3 Dec 2018 Curated by Bernhard Draz | Artists: Chan Sook Choi, Byungjun Kwon, Bernhard Draz, Georg Klein FACING NORTH KOREA brings together two South Korean and two German artists who explore the country and its regime with openness, nuance, and beyond familiar clichés. Chan Sook Choi presents Yangjiri, an installation of video, objects, and archival photography. It reflects the Yangjiri villages of the 1960s—propaganda settlements near the DMZ where North Korean refugees were forced to live in facades-only dwellings facing north. Choi transforms these constrained architectures into cinematic, hybrid spaces that seem to extend infinitely. Byungjun Kwon’s Forest of Subtle Truth 3 sonically interprets Kyodong Island, a civilian zone just south of the DMZ. Using Local Positioning System-guided headphones, visitors experience the interplay of historical voices, propagandistic broadcasts, natural sounds, and lingering military tension. Bernhard Draz’s Empathic Propaganda stems from his 2017 DPRK visit. Engaging directly with North Korean visual language, he inserts himself into large-scale acrylic paintings, replacing martial slogans with reflections on the country’s self-image, revealing empathy, humor, and human complexity behind the propaganda. Georg Klein’s The Sound before Silence – Souvenirs from North Korea transforms an encounter with a North Korean guide singing Kimilsungia into a performative audio-visual narrative. Collaborating with South Korean Gayageum player Youjin Sung, Klein stages a musical dialogue bridging the North-South divide, capturing the tension, intimacy, and cultural resonance of his journey.