소수자의 설움이 많이 느껴졌던 전시.
가장 인상깊었던 것 중의 하나:
북한여권을 가지고 있다는 이유만으로
스파이 취급을 당해야했던 유학시절을 들려준 재일교포 김애순작가.
참다못해 남한여권으로 바꾸고나니 인간대접을 해주시더라는 -_-
본인은 분명 똑같은 사람인데,
사실 종이 조각에 다름 없는 여권이 본인을 정의한다는 사실에 화가나서
두루마리 휴지에 본인의 북한과 남한 여권을 번갈아 찍으셨대요.
하나하나 일일이!
그렇게 만든 두루마리 휴지가 백개도 넘는 듯 했어요.
영국에서 전시했을 땐 실제로 화장실에 설치해놓고 관람객들이 사용하게 하셨다네요.
Korean Diaspora paints against discrimination
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Millions of Koreans were displaced to foreign countries since the mid-1860s. The peak was during the Japanese colonization from 1910 to 1945 when many were forced to work overseas. The emigrants and their descendants currently living in China, Japan or central Asia, who number roughly seven million, are what we call today the Korean Diaspora.
The National Museum of Contemporary Art organized the exhibition "Korean Diaspora Artists in Asia" to empathize with them through their artworks.
More than 180 paintings, sculptures, photos and installations by 31 Diaspora Koreans who had to leave the country between the mid-19th century and the mid-20th century are on display.
"We hope viewers can empathize with the artists' sensibilities, which were built through the hardships they underwent while living as outsiders," said curator Park Su-jin.
The exhibition is divided into three sections - Japan, the Commonwealth of Independent States, China - and each section is organized chronologically so that visitors can feel like they are traveling in different countries as well as in time.
Although they are all Koreans, their artworks show completely different tendencies based on the cultures they grew up in.
Artist Cho Yang-gyu's works are the first ones that visitors will meet in the Japan section.
Cho, who was a teacher in Korea, was smuggled into Japan in 1945 in opposition to the establishment of the government. Contrary to his expectations, he lived as an outsider there, doing physical labor. Disappointed, the artist sailed into North Korea in 1960 wanting to fit in, but it is not known what happened to him after that.
"We don't even know how he died. The artist is not even included in the artist dictionary North Korea publishes," the curator said.
The workers with black faces sitting droopingly in front of a warehouse in his painting implies the hard life Cho had lived, not being able to adjust to any society.
The younger generation of contemporary artists living in Japan, also expresses confusion about their identities.
"I have many friends, Korean and Japanese. They all ask me, 'Why do you stay in Japan and suffer as a 'gyopo'?' Yes, I am one of the minorities, but I think everyone, in some sense, is a minority somewhere. It could be for many reasons, like for being a woman, old, or young," said artist Kim Young-suk.
Kim realized this when one of her friends, a Korean resident in the United States who used to work for one of the world's top investment banks, told her about the glass ceiling at her work that she could not break, due to being Asian.
To complain about the discrimination and also to express how much Westerners and Easterners share in common, Kim thought of rice.
She collected rice from all over the world - from Bangladesh to California. By using a magnifying glass, one can take a closer look at each type of rice and also read the tiny explanations Kim wrote about them.
"In the eyes of westerners, all Asians might look the same, but if you look closely, by holding up the magnifying glass, each one of us is unique," Kim said.
Another Korean artist residing in Japan, Kim Ae-sun revealed the mortifying experiences she had while studying in England, on toilet rolls.
It all began when she took her North Korean passport to England. Her action did not have any special reasons - she simply had to get a Korean passport for her first-ever flight, and it happened to be a North Korean one. It was a natural thing for the gyopos living in Japan. But others did not seem to think so.
"Everyone treated me as if I was a spy or something. I had to go through all kinds of inspections. I could not take it anymore, so I changed my passport to a South Korean one. Unbelievably, everyone started to treat me like a normal person," Kim said.
Kim could not understand why a piece of paper, which was nothing more than toilet paper to her, could define her. To prove that she was always the same Kim Ae-sun despite the different passports she had, the artist printed the images of both her passports on toilet rolls.
In a previous exhibition in England, she even installed the rolls in actual toilet stalls so that visitors could use them.
The second section shows paintings by artists living in the Commonwealth of Independent States. The works do not show a significant trend but have diverse tendencies.
Among them, Kim Sergei's "Cage" depicts Korean workers, some dressed in prison uniforms, busily working under surveillance of the local police behind green bars. Taking a step back, viewers will be surprised to see that the green bars form a gloomy face. The painting makes you wonder who is really behind the bars.
Most artists living in China painted portraits, as the country often used them for educational purposes. It is only recently that the Korean artists there started to diversify their paintings to better express their confusion about their identities.
Artist Piao Guangxie's humorous series of "humans floating in a pink bubble" signifies the suffocating modern society where individuals cannot easily find their true identities.
A weird thing about the works showcased in the last two sections: Despite the artists' possible resentment toward the countries, most of the workers that appear in the paintings have smiles on their faces.
"It is because the artists lived in socialist countries. They were educated that labor is always a good and beautiful thing," explained the curator.
The exhibition runs through Sep. 27 at National Museum of Contemporary Art in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province. Admission is 3,000 won. For more information, call (02) 2188-6000 or visit www.moca.go.kr
(claire@heraldm.com)
By Park Min-young
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