Project ON #6 – ERINNERUNG AN DIE KOREANISCHE TEILUNG, 2019

The Korean Cultural Center in Germany is offering artists an opportunity to exhibit in our galley space, gallery damdam. This open call program <Project ON>, which launched in 2017, has started to provide more opportunities for artists to showcase their work in the capital of contemporary art, Berlin, Germany. Furthermore, it is a project initiated to promote an exchange between the Korean and German art scene.

Recently, the relationship between South Korea and North Korea has piqued the interest of many from all over the world. In Korea, not only has the theme of the division of the Korean peninsula been dealt with by the REAL DMZ project, but it was also the focus of the 2018 Gwangju and Busan Biennale. With the collapse of the Berlin Wall celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2019, Germany is also directly and indirectly interested in the current atmosphere on the Korean peninsula. The theme of <Project ON> at the Korean Cultural Center in Germany will follow this trend. It will, however, pose a slightly different question and approach the situation on the peninsula from a different perspective: how is the image of North Korea and of the division remembered in our living spaces and everyday life? Through this exhibition, we want to start a dialogue about where we are living following the division, what kind of place and what kind of world we want to live in in the near future.

“The DMZ is a political fact and landscape that brings together trauma, loss, pain, temporality, and an experience of violence that beckons an artistic response to cultural issues. Homeland, family, exile, landscape, places, loss, belonging, dignity, solidarity and a new beginning have an effect on the whole society from here and has a lasting effect on subsequent generations. The competition will seek artistic proposals and concepts that seek to preserve memories of the past from being forgotten or repressed, but at the same time bring about from these painful memories and experiences ideas that can shape the present in modern societies. It will select artistic works that produce an appropriate form of remembering, testifying, and suggesting a reconquest of the future.” – Dr. Britta Schmitz

Artists: Yunsun Jung, Jinran Kim, Yuyang Liu, Claudia Schmitz, Susanna Schoenberg, Tzusoo