/Moon Kyungwon & Jeon Joonho

Biography: 

The recent artistic endeavours of Moon Kyungwon (b. 1969, Seoul, KR) & Jeon Joonho (b. 1969, Busan, KR) centre on News from Nowhere, a collaboration project and interdisciplinary platform. Their site-specific collaborative platform was initially presented at Kassel DOCUMENTA 13, DE (2012) and since then has been shown at the Korea Artist Prize exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, KR (2012); the Sullivan Galleries, School of Art Institute of Chicago, US (2013); Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich, CH (2015); Tate Liverpool, UK (2018-19); Hyundai Motors Project at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, KR (2021–22); Art Sonje Center (2022), Seoul, KR; and 21st Century Contemporary Museum of Arts, Kanazawa (2022). Moon and Jeon’s other projects include The Ways of Folding Space and Flying, Korean Pavilion at Venice Biennale (2015); and Freedom Village, the Frieze project in London and SCAI THE BATHHOUSE in Tokyo, JP (2017).

Works: 

Moon Kyungwon & Jeon Joonho, News from Nowhere: Freedom Village, 2021

2-channel HD film installation, colour, sound, 14:35 min.

Courtesy of the artists

News from Nowhere: Freedom Village is the latest chapter in an artistic project that is based on the only village that lies on the South Korean side of the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) – Daeseong-dong, also known as “Freedom Village.” The village, which is not even marked on the navigation system, has spent the past 7 decades without being a part of either South or North Korea since the signing of the Armistice Agreement in 1953 after the Korean War. The two artists focus on the deformed nature of the village that has resulted from the confrontation and tension of human history, moving beyond the perspective of viewing it as a distinctive location resulting from the unique political situation of the Korean Peninsula. At the same time, they have expanded the project to also reflect the reality that the world faces today as we grapple with the global pandemic which is leading to increased isolation in many ways. The project shows that the Freedom Village, which has been isolated for a long time as one that exists but does not at the same time due to the ideological conflict of the past, reflects the present and future of our society while continuously changing and repeating within our daily lives.