After coming across propaganda flyers from North Korea one day, I began to imagine communicating with unknown people in the North, using art as a means to facilitate this forbidden contact. This was the point of departure of my ongoing Embroidery Project. Texts and images produced digitally were delivered by intermediaries through China and Russia to craftspeople in the North. What returned on the other hand were labour-intensive analogue embroidery works, every little stitching of which was done by their hands. I hoped that while doing the work, artisans would ruminate upon the given texts and images, interpret the allegory and stretch their imagination. In fact, there is not much I could do in the process. Rather, there is always the risk of the work being censored and confiscated by the North Korean authorities. I also had to pay intermediaries additional amounts and sometimes they would just disappear. These uncertainties testify to today’s reality; the physical inaccessibility of North Korea and the ideological hostility that dominates world history. This is why I brought in the invisible obstruction as a condition of this artistic communication. Process and outcome, image and invisible reality repeatedly overlap each other, just as the warp and weft do as they are woven.
The beginning of the Chandeliers series which is one of the Embroidery Projects was a scene in a documentary about a North Korean card stunt. While a variety of remarkable images were made by thousands of people behind colour charts, there was a boy who stuck his head out and quickly disappeared, which was captured by the camera in close-up. It was an extraordinary moment as the boy became one of the pixels which in the aggregate constitute an image of a gun. Political and economic ideologies operate behind these extravagant images. Similarly, what underlies the title of the work and the luminous image of the chandelier created by labour-intensive embroidery is a gesture towards the tragic history of the two Koreas, the division of which was more of a decision by imperial powers. Like the little boy that hid behind the colour chart, the craftspeople encounter the world as unseen beings who nevertheless exist behind each and every stitch of the chandelier that they made.
(Translated from the artist’s note)
Kyungah Ham
What you see is the unseen / Chandeliers for Five Cities BC 02-04, 2014–16
North Korean hand embroidery, silk threads on cotton, middleman, anxiety, censorship, ideology, wooden frame, approx. 1900 hrs / 4 persons
265 x 357 cm
Courtesy of the artist, carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid and Kukje Gallery, Seoul
Kyungah Ham
What you see is the unseen / Chandeliers for Five Cities BC 02-05, 2014–16
North Korean hand embroidery, silk threads on cotton, middleman, anxiety, censorship, ideology, wooden frame, approx. 2000 hrs / 4 persons
265 x 362 cm
Courtesy of the artist, carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid and Kukje Gallery, Seoul
Kyungah Ham, born in 1966 in Seoul/KR, is a contemporary artist based in Seoul. Her works constitute an inquiry into the structural contradictions and injustice of modern society. Her major solo exhibitions include Ham Phantom and A Map, Kukje Gallery, Seoul, KR (2024); Kyungah, Pace Gallery, Hong Kong, HK (2018); Phantom Footstep (Carlier Gebauer Gallery, Berlin, DEU, 2017); Phantom Footstep, Kukje Gallery, Seoul, KR (2015); and Desire and Anesthesia, Art Sonje Center, Seoul, KR (2009). She has also participated in many international projects, including The Shape of Time Contemporary Korean Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (2023), Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneaqpolis (2024); Hallu, The Korean Wave, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2023), The Museum of Fine Art, Boston (2024), The San Francisco Asian Art Museum (2025); We do not dream Alone, 1st Triennial of Asian Art, Asia Society Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, New York (2020); Threads, KAI10/ Arthena Foundation, Düsseldorf, DE (2021); Remaining: New Perspective, UBS Art gallery, New York, US (2020); Examination of a case, Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz (2020); Paradox, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Casa Cavazzini (2018); The Asian Corridor of Culture City in East Asia 2017, Kyoto Art Center & Nijo Castle, Kyoto, JP (2017); Material Connection, Jane Lombard Gallery, New York, US (2017); Artists of the Year 2016, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, KR (2016); Taipei Biennale, Taipei National Museum of Art, Taipei, TW (2016); Asia Time, 1st Asia Biennale and 4th Triennale, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, CN (2015); and Beyond and Between, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, KR (2014).
