The shadow is a powerful time-image that embodies constant flux, never maintaining the same shape. The shadow reveals its being through double operations of the light as well as the things that block the light. The shadow is the visualization of the movement of the sun, but what blocks the light is what determines the forms of the shadow. Thus the performativity of the shadow is reflexivity. 

Here, the shadow refers to the unfinished shadow created during the Cold War. It extends to our post-Cold War era, and the end of this shadow is connected to the story of nature restored in a neglected environment within the border area where human access is prohibited. A study of this natural environment will put a spotlight on the certain things that block the light and bring out the particular forms of the shadow today, while imagining the possibility of a new “ecosystem” to come.

The Real DMZ Project (ongoing since 2012) has been an attempt to reflect upon some of the shadows created by the Cold War. It has focused on the particular geographic region called the demilitarized zone (DMZ). As one of the most heavily armed borders in the world, the DMZ has divided the Korean Peninsula, not just in a spatial way, but also in a spiritual way. The DMZ as a buffer zone between North and South Korea is a land that is contained within itself. It reflects upon the shadows of both sides. As a psychological self-defense, the DMZ has been a reality that can be deliberately erased in the consciousness of people in the Korean Peninsula. But it never goes away. At different historical moments, and by different political needs, it comes back and creates the shadow even in our post-Cold War era. The Real DMZ Project has aimed to put a spotlight on the things that block the light and to bring out the particular forms of the shadow of the DMZ.

Under the Naked Daylight

The global pandemic has been the naked light through which our realities came crashing down. We learn we are interconnected more than we imagined to be. What this pandemic put a spotlight on was the shadows of our time: the climate crisis, poverty, inequalities, financialization of natural resources, wars and borders. If the Real DMZ was an attempt to grasp the forms of the shadow created by the DMZ, we would like to propose another chapter that goes beyond the specific geographical boundary. How do we see the forms of the shadow in our time?

The land of the shadow is everywhere. From the battlefields in Ukraine to China’s repression in Xinxiang to the Mexican borders, mobility obstacles and restrictions deteriorate the flow of energy.

How do we bring the naked daylight to the land of the shadow? How do we reconfigure the specific stretches of space and time that are rendered by our contemporary spatial debilities? This project proposes the artist’s eye to play as the naked daylight that will redistribute the sensible to resist spatial debilities. By delivering how we feel about the world we live in, we would like to create a scenography of our troubled world that explains our state of feeling. This strategy is to cause a change in the audiences that would recognize the familiar sensibles in the unfamiliar stories. It is to reclaim our bodies that have been limited by the shadow of our time. Some of the artistic motifs that have been the inspirations for this new chapter are the followings: moving lights in Haegue Yang’s blind series, the reflected light in the mirrors portrayed in Sung Hwan Kim’s films, Minok Lim’s search light in S.O.S or the ways in which Youngin Hong deploys the light in her embroidery pieces.

Engaging issues such as the climate crisis, labor migration and borders, the Real DMZ Project has always evolved into something more than itself. In 2015, invited by Slought, the Real DMZ Project presented at University of Pennsylvania. In 2017, in collaboration with Denmark’s Kunsthal Aarhus, we organized the Aarhus Edition. In 2018, we held an exhibition at New Art Exchange in Nottingham, UK, and in 2022 at Wolfsburg Kunstmuseum, Germany. In 2023, the Ottawa edition at SAW Gallery will take place. Each edition has been reformulated by its local contexts and concerns through the new commissions.