From February to June this year, the Korea Cultural Centre Canada is organizing Kaleidoscopic Korea, a series of exhibitions showcasing Korea's timeless beauty. Borrowing from the theme of a kaleidoscope, which constantly intertwines underlying elements and intermediaries to create dynamic imagery, this exhibition series presents various facets of Korean aesthetics—from lifestyle to the Hangul writing system and K-food; from tradition to the present; from Korea to Canada. The objects displayed in the exhibition have been produced by prominent Korean cultural institutions such as the National Folk Museum, the National Intangible Heritage Center, the National Hangeul Museum, and the Korea Craft & Design Foundation. In addition, the exhibition features contemporary Canadian craftworks inspired by traditional Korean arts. These diverse subjects and identities envision a completely different dynamic of Korean beauty for the future, encouraging dialogues between different objects and concepts through communication, interconnection, and convergence.   Posters designed by Minhye Park  Titled as K-Lifestyle, the first exhibition in the series opens on Friday, February 23. Under the theme of Korean lifestyle, the exhibition introduces traditional Korean lifestyle practices and household items packaged by the National Folk Museum in Korea and donated to the KCC, called the Korean Culture Box. From the Box, K-Lifestyle displays the following: 1. <Sarangbang Box>: Showcasing the living space of Confucian scholars during the Joseon Dynasty in the 14th-19th century, emphasizing male spaces. 2. <Anbang Box>: Highlighting the hidden living space of women and their most cherished possessions during this restrictive Confucian society in the Joseon Dynasty. 3. <Annyeong Box>: Projecting sample images of Korean lifestyles from the past to the present while providing general information on Korea. Additionally, K-Lifestyle features Korean intangible cultural heritage objects created by nationally certified artisans from the National Intangible Heritage Center.                          <Sarangbang Box>                                               <Anbang Box> The exhibition also features a model of the Moon Jar. This white porcelain was originally produced during the mid-Joseon Dynasty in the 17th and 18th centuries when Confucian scholars began searching for new social values through practical science, aiming to escape the weight of academy-heavy Chinese theories. Characterized as a Korean cultural icon worldwide, the Moon Jar embodies an unpretentious, gentle, and naturalistic approach inherent in Korean culture. It deeply served as artistic inspiration for the prolific Korean painter, the late Kim Hwan-ki. Notably, it was also sold for 6 billion Korean won at the Christie’s auction in New York in 2023. The cultural traditions and artistic expressions showcased in this exhibition have also inspired contemporary Korean craft artists. Alongside those traditional objects, the exhibition also includes contemporary craftworks by Korean-Canadian artists Chung-Im Kim and Joon-Hee Kim. Chung-Im Kim Chung-Im Kim has received accolades and exhibitions for her work in many prestigious institutions such as the Boston Museum of Art, the invitational Bojagi Exhibition at the Suwon Park Museum in Korea, the Museum Nagele in the Netherlands, the Wollongong Art Gallery in Australia, the Belgian Triennial Contemporary Textile Arts Exposition and the recent traveling exhibitions at the Poikilo Museum in Finland, Tamat Museum in Belgium, Dronninglund Kunstcenter in Denmark, and the Textilmuseum in Germany. Kim's design and execution have been honoured with prizes and awards in many international art competitions. She received her MFA from Seoul Women's University in 1984 and immigrated to Canada in 1990.  Since then, Kim had worked as a freelance designer for many years and also taught at OCAD University in Toronto from 1997 until her retirement in 2021.  She is represented by the Oeno Gallery. In her elegant monochromatic white tapestries, finely detailed patterns swirl around the fabric. Kim’s organic form is inspired by the patterns she sees in nature. The white ink on white fabric provides a subtle texture. By sewing small pieces of industrial felt together that are then pulled taut, Kim creates a web-like 3-D effect. The Korean-Canadian artist’s work is contemporary but it is also rooted in the rich traditions of her Korean homeland. Chung-Im Kim <Dawn>, 2009, 117*12*10.16cm Joon Hee Kim Joon Hee Kim’s work explores the significant perception of existing as a human being while examining and reconciling the diverse identities and heritage of the world, seeking out the compelling forces of beauty and desire. An award-winning ceramist who was an art director in her native South Korea, came to Canada and took patisserie studies at Le Cordon Bleu in Ottawa. However, switching careers, and graduating from Sheridan College, led her to become intrigued with ceramics. As the Cecil Lewis Sculpture Scholarship recipient, she completed a Master’s in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts in the UK. Her compelling ceramic works have been exhibited in the USA, Germany, UK, and they have also been in a solo exhibition at the Clay and Glass Gallery. She examines her heritage through the lenses of multiple influences as she travels to both national and international artist residencies. Following the Banff Clay Revival Residency, she was one of the six artists selected for the Canadian Craft Biennial. Then she attended the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park Residence in Japan, the Ceramic Centre Residency in Berlin, and most recently and prevalently the Archie Bray Foundation Residency. She was a recipient of a large variety of many honourable awards and grants, including the Helen Copeland Memorial Award for 6-consecutive years from the Craft Ontario Council, a considerable amount of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council, the Best of Student Exhibition from the Toronto Outdoor Fair later flourished in winning the Best of Ceramics, and Best of Craft and Design the ensuing year, as well as being awarded the prestigious Winifred Shantz National Award for an exceptional emerging ceramic artist. Her latest achievement derives from her work being chosen through numerous selections for the Royal Botanical Gardens' International Sculpture Collection in Burlington, Ontario, and great recognition was being selected as the Artist of the Year 2023 by the ITSLIQUID, a communication platform for contemporary art, architecture, design and fashion. Joon Hee Kim was also invited to a group exhibition, <Between Horizens: Korean Ceramic Artists in America> in the Clay Studio, Philadelphia in 2023.  Joon Hee Kim < Something Divine>, 2023, 56*98*55cm During the exhibition, visitors can engage in various public events, including artist talks with contemporary craft workshops.  If you’re interested, register for the following events: 1. K-Lifestyle: Opening Reception and Artist Talk by Ceramist Jun Hee Kim       - Date: February 23, 2024 (Friday), 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM     - Venue: Multipurpose Hall, Korea Cultural Centre     - Registration: https://forms.gle/ewWYy1Xv5krfmott7 2. Artist Talk by Textile Artist Chung-Im Kim    - Date: March 15, 2024 (Friday), 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM    - Venue: Multipurpose Hall, Korea Cultural Center    - Registration link will be provided later. 3. Traditional Hanok Experience: Create a 3D Hanok Puzzle Workshop    - Date: March 22, 2024 (Friday), 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM    - Venue: Multipurpose Hall, Korea Cultural Center    - Registration link will be provided later. Korean Cultural Centre Canada Address: & Contact:   - 150 Elgin Street, Unit 101, Ottawa, Ontario, K2P 1L4, Canada  - Tel: 1-613-233-8008/ E-mail: canada@korea.kr Hours: Monday - Friday, 09:00 - 17:00 (Closed 12:00 - 13:00)

On the upcoming 2024 Seollal on February 10, the Korean Cultural Centre Canada is pleased to introduce two very special exhibitions to our fellow Canadians, which celebrate the Year of the Blue Dragon in 2024.  <The Blue Dragon> by the National Folk Museum of Korea (December 20, 2023 ~ March 3, 2024/ Special Exhibition Hall Ⅱ (NFMK Seoul)) <Finding Dragons at the Museum in Celebration of the Year of the Blue Dragon> by the National Museum of Korea (December 20, 2023 ~ April 7, 2024/ Permanent Gallery)  Click the images below to find out about each exhibition.      The Korean Cultural Centre Canada wishes everyone a Happy New Year! 

In Canadian Perspectives: Negotiating Borders  In celebration of the closing of the <Negotiating Borders> exhibition in Ottawa on January 27, the Korean Cultural Centre shares three reviews and responses to the exhibition written by three Canadian writers.  1. Negotiating Borders (after Crash Landing on You), Paola Poletto (December, 2023) 2. DMZ, Paul Hong (December 2023),  3. Negotiating Borders: Korean Art, Maureen Korp (The OSCAR, December 2023)  ----- 1.  Negotiating Borders (after Crash Landing on You)  Paola Poletto (December, 2023)   This photograph conveys my feeling of being in FRAKTUR (Fracture) (2018) by Jeewi Lee, situated in a cubed room divided diagonally on the ground by white rocks and dark grey ones. To enter the room, located at the far end of SAW Gallery in Ottawa, one had to step onto the grey rocks first, roughly from the view you are looking into now. The crunchy - crunch beneath my feet echoed upward and beyond the room, amplifying my every move. It was as if I was under audio surveillance in an otherwise quiet gallery setting. In writing this to you now, I have the privilege of having left the room. I have re-compartmentalized the experience as a white cube thrice removed by space-time, of being hemispheres away from a politically divided country, and interpreting trauma through aestheticisms.  On the north side of the room, top right of picture, there is a black-framed door, locked shut with a numbered lock pad: the glassed door looks into a hallway and across into the gallery’s administrative offices. In this photograph, the black-framed door is, metaphorically speaking, wonderfully ajar. It has made this photo response possible. I turn right to look at two framed takbon rubbings of trees in the DMZ, titled INZISION (Incision) (2018) not captured in this photo. They complement the floor work FRAKTUR (Fracture), both made by Lee. Their pairings echo what I experienced at the 2023 Gwangju Biennale, where multiple artworks made by the same artist show how their ideas germinate, carry and expand over time. Similarly, here, installations have grown tentacular arms with drawings and films meant to hug you and me, here, continents away from North and South Korea, with perhaps an offer to greater understanding of their political complexity. Lee’s individual art practice permeates. It renews with each new context and each new dialogue with an adjacent artwork, and another viewer.   I look left to the blood-red wall work by the Nova Scotia-based HaeAhn Paul Kwon Kajander, a stylistic cast impression of residential burglar bars that were salvaged from the window of a demolished post-war home in Seoul. The deep blue and red colour of this work overlord the room like a monster. Indeed, I feel trapped in this room. I move my cameraphone to a panoramic setting and begin to move through the space to take my photo. Each time I try to make my panorama, I get pulled into the centre of the room, sucked down into the rocks. My movements hasten. We are at 38-degree angles, body and machine, a simulation of the DMZ’s 38th parallel north: the photographs stop, start, stop, start; I stop, start, stop, start, together, frustratingly out of synch. I have chosen this photo here as the most representative photo of being complicit in the collective desire to negotiate borders, to moonwalk from ground with white rocks on the north side to the ground with grey rocks. In the other gallery, Ottawa-based Adrian Gollner offers an alternate mapping of the DMZ from Incheon to Cheorwon County with Trace (2023). A birdwatcher, he drew birds spotted on his journey walking publicly accessible parts of the DMZ. The drawings are pinned on the wall away from his blue vinyl line representing the GPS mapping of the zones he walked. The birds here, on this wall, most feet firmly planted, surround the no fly zone: they are, though, freely flying the DMZ.  Across from this scene where every bird is named, is an encased child’s rubber boot, with drippings of paraffin wax over a blue sponge. Minouk Lim’s Farewell (2011) resonates across continents with sadness for every child lost to genocide. The sponge, sprawled out from the boot-like wings, wishes it into flight like a spirited bird. The boot accompanies a video work also by Lim called It’s a Name I Gave Myself (2018) that culls footage from a 138 day-long news broadcast made in 1983 that attempted to reunite lost family members scattered and fractured by the Korean War. Lim brings into view the horrifying footage of children separated from their families 30 years prior. As adults they don’t know their own birth names and some use memories of childhood scars and other physical attributes to reunite with family. I stand by the boot and look back toward this picture now. It is a reminder that my cameraphone and these words are also transmitted.  Artificial Sun (2017) a single-channel video installation by Chan Sook Choi projects an image of a common heater lamp, rotating left to right to left, found throughout the homes of elderly women living in the Civilian Control Zone of the DMZ. Positioned up high on the wall, the projection could also be a cartoon retro space blaster, echoing the NOWness of the “rising tensions after launch of spy satellite in defiance of UN sanctions” (McCurry, 2023).  Opposite this radiating sun are two seaweed-coloured lacquered flecks of fragmented South Korean newspapers pinned to the wall as part of HaeAhn Paul Kwon Kajander’s sprawled site-responsive installation, Leave Without Absence (2023). These and other materials are scattered by the artists throughout gallery spaces as various debris and imprints, such as the one I describe in the picture above in the room with FRAKTUR (Fracture). As “ideological scabs” (Kajander, 2023) which the artists describe as part of a larger project that “explores the associative implications of thresholds that attempt to keep things separate, limit passage, but may also catalyze transformation or act as points of departure,” these two flecks, for me, are two urgent things: the mapping of Palestine and Israel and other brutal active wars that are entangling the way I see this exhibition; and… they are also the left over flakes of gim on our plates after our family finishes off all the gimbap halmoni has dropped off for dinner.  Notes:  Justin McCurry, “North Korea moves heavy weapons to border with South,” November 27, 2023, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/27/north-korea-moves-heavy-weapons-to-border-with-south Kajander, Paul & HaeAnn Kwon, e-mail correspondence with author, December 18, 2023 About: I’ve traveled to South Korea 3 times, most recently to Suwon/Seoul, took a Train to Busan, and bus to Gwangju (2023). Travelling to and within this triangulation of places broadened my outsider understanding of regional cultural differences, politics and aesthetics beyond those I have gleaned from my partner Paul over 30 years, and more recently from popular Korean drama such as Crash Landing on You (2019/20), and comedic segments of Conan O’Brien and Steven Yeun travelling to the DMZ in 2016. The first time I travelled to Korea, Paul and I were recently married. He accompanied me first for work to Nagoya, Japan at the 2005 World Expo before staying with my in-laws in Suwon. The second time, my brother-in-law was married in a traditional Korean ceremony in the foothills of Seoul. Our daughters were lantern girls for Auntie Su and samcheon. My current practice-research works through the glitch panorama as a mapping site for embodied, multi-voiced experience. This is a methodology from which I can combine photography and words toward photopoetic response. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DMZ The plan is straightforward and contingent on building a time machine. Then, we go back in time to 1983 to KBS headquarters in Seoul. KBS headquarters has 453 hours of tape from their original broadcast. They essentially did the initial audition process. It's a rice cooker rocking and bubbling with pent up unreleased emotions. On tape number 112, you'll find the story of a man, a minam, named Kangjeon Kwang- Mo. He was 36 years old in 1983. When he was four, his mother left him with his neighbour while she went to find their father in Incheon. What was supposed to take five days turned into forever because of the Chinese New Years Offensive (and the fact that the father had another family in Incheon and that they had already fled to Busan). The neighbour fled Seoul with the boy but lost track of him in Suwon when he was off- loaded on to someone else's horse-drawn wagon. He was later found wandering in the streets by retreating American forces and deposited at an orphanage. During the 1983 KBS operation to reunite families, Kwang-Mo, who was a part-time gigolo and a performer in a traditional Korean dance troupe, thought he had found his long-lost mother but it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. Hence, Kwang-Mo, like the song, was alone again (naturally). Outwardly serene, he is supersaturated with bitterness, disappointment, resentment, anger, sadness, loneliness, despair, betrayal, and a deep mistrust of the universe. Through proper handling and management, we ensure an alchemical sublimation of his turbulent soul and undoubtedly produce a shining star unlike any other. Kangjeon Kwang-Mo will be our first recruit-trainee and the leader, the visual, and lead dancer of a super K-pop band of the 21st century. The time is ripe for a new type of band. Not a band made of lost, hungry always- dieting, dye-damaged hair kids-as-commodities but adults starved by circumstances and hardship and hair greying with age. A group, an image, a brand, an ethos built on a foundation of years of suffering, hardship, want, absence, melancholy, despair, terror,   and helplessness. Their music and dancing and very presence will bring about the catharsis -- a sublime catharsis unknown these days -- so badly needed, and finally exorcise the ghosts of Japanese annexation and foreign rule, civil war, and separation. They will be the necessary counterweight to the ungrounded illusion of endless growth, rampant unfettered consumption, and insatiable greed. The future needs the past desperately. But we found out that Kwang-Mo was still alive apparently and lived in a town near the DMZ. His dancing and gigolo days far behind him, he sometimes plows a field and hangs up home-brewed scarecrows. We went to search for him. What we didn't expect was that the DMZ, even the outlying areas approaching the actual zone, are beset with ghosts. They were everywhere. They were stuck in a liminal zone. An eternal departure lounge in an airport that neither sends off nor welcomes any flights. A train station in the middle of nowhere waiting for a train that will never come or doesn't even exist. Unable to leave the zone due to some sort of other world landmines and barbwire and ever-watchful sentry towers. They wander and are greedy for company with the living. The DMZ is the space between dreams and reality. And that's where we found my uncle -- or at least that's who the red-crowned crane claimed to be. The only boy and youngest in a family of 7 girls and hence the jewel of the family. Just a baby, he was taken by his father and a servant on a train heading to Busan during the New Years retreat. The mother and the sisters along with their housemaid were put on a horse drawn carriage and given an address to meet up in Busan. But somewhere near Jirisan, while waiting for another train, the story goes, a tiger emerged from the forest and grabbed him while his father was asleep. Another story claims a family who lost all their children kidnapped him. Another claims a giant eagle plucked him out of a makeshift cradle in broad daylight.   "How do you know me?" I asked, while filming the red-crowned crane standing on the other side of the electrified fence in the DMZ. "I wasn't even born when you disappeared." The crane then went on to narrate the major events and locations of my life up to the point where I left Korea and the names of his sisters. "Why are you a crane?" "How else am I to talk to you? At any rate, I'm glad you came to visit." "What happened to you during the war?" "A man and woman who lost their children, kidnapped me and ran off into the forest. Shortly afterwards, a mother black bear who harboured deep resentment towards people since her cubs had been taken away, killed the man and woman and adopted me but I died a few years later due to malnutrition." A few other cranes landed on a nearby tree. "Why are you here, anyway?" my uncle who was speaking through or as a red- crowned crane asked. I told him my plan to build a new super k-pop group. I told him some of the names for the band we came up with: • Demigods of the Modern Zone • Denizens of the Mighty Zone • Denizens of the Machinations of a new age Zone • Demiurges of the new Magnificent Zone • Dynamos of the Modern Zone   "What's K-pop?" he asked. I tried to explain. "Why don't you fly over to this side?" He refused. I had a brilliant idea. "Let's face-time my mom! Wouldn't you like to see your sister? It's been so long." She picked up, finally. I told her we had located her long-lost brother whom she barely remembered. She looked at me blankly. There is the wailing deep from the haunted caverns of the soul accompanied by fists beating against the chest. There is gnashing of teeth louder than the propaganda radio transmissions blaring on speakers pointed both north and south along the DMZ. Instead the two stared at each other wordlessly through the phone. "You haven’t called out your sister's name, yet," I said to my uncle, the crane. "Why don’t you call out for her? Let it out. For all of us. We're filming this." The crane, my uncle, looked at me. "Don't be afraid. Let it out. The years of torment and hardship locked within you. Unlock it. Release it! Wail your soul out!" A pitiful shrill shriek arose from its long neck and emerged from its beak and then dissipated into a wisp in the cold air.   "Okay, " I turned to my mother. "Is there something you want to say to your beloved long-lost baby brother?" "That's a bird," she stated. My uncle, an endangered species of crane, stared at my phone and tilted his head to one side and then to another. He then said: "You’ve grown so old. I can hardly recognize you, now. How did you grow so old?" Author Bio: Paul Hong is a writer and librarian who was born in South Korea and has lived in Canada for most of his life. He is co-authoring a book about one of the first Koreans to visit Canada, or more specifically, one particular family farm in Southwestern Ontario in the early 20th century. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.     Negotiating Borders: Korean Art, Maureen Korp (The OSCAR, December 2023)  --https://oldottawasouth.ca/oscar-archives/2023/12/01/2023-12-december/    (Check out the Page 32) 

The Korean Cultural Center Canada is hosting "Negotiating Borders" with SAW, Real DMZ Project, and the Korea Foundation for International Culture Exchange (KOFICE), from October 13th, 2023, to January 27th, 2024.  As part of Negotiating Borders Ottawa-2023, the KCC is pleased to share the RDP Online Exhibition, which is currently on view at the KCC Gallery.  RDP Online Exhibition  North and South Korea have been divided for 70 years. What divides the two countries is not just the physical border called the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone), but its immeasurable effects on the political, military and diplomatic sectors of both countries. We cannot see or describe them in words but can sense their existence affecting our past, present, and future. The REAL DMZ PROJECT is a contemporary art and research project focused on issues of the DMZ and the border area. The RDP is pleased to present an online exhibition to bring the artists’ visionary concepts into virtual realization, and we hope that it will contribute to the viewers’ perspectives on and rethinking of the border and the division of Korea. Lee Bul, Minouk Lim, Kyungah Ham, Tobias Rehberger, and Superflex are artists who conceive of projects with borderless minds and unimaginable visions. This exhibition offers them a borderless virtual environment where no constraints exist. It simulates the DMZ, maneuvering the line between reality and imagination. Designed by the media artist duo Roomtone, the virtual DMZ space partakes in proposing for the future of the border area.  Artists  - SUPERFLEX One Two Three Swing!  - Tobias Rehberger Duplex House  - Lee Bul Aubade V  - Kyungah Ham Are you lonely, too?  - Minouk Lim DMZ Portable Keeper and  - Roomtone Click the image below to launch the RDP Online Exhibition  CREDIT:  - Hosted by the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange (KOFICE)  - Organized by the Real DMZ Project, Korean Cultural Center Canada and SAW  - Sponsored by the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism  - Curated by Sunjung Kim  - Project by Space for Contemporary Art  Further information on Negotiating Borders Ottawa 2023:  - SAW Gallery - KCC Gallery 

The Korean Cultural Center Canada is hosting "Negotiating Borders" in collaboration with SAW, the Real DMZ Project, and the Korea Foundation for International Culture Exchange (KOFICE), from October 13th, 2023 to January 27th, 2024. The year 2023 holds significant meaning as it marks the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Korea and Canada. Hosting the "Negotiating Borders" exhibition in Canada, in partnership with the prominent contemporary art institution SAW, is a significant signal. Not only because Canada was the first country to support Korea by sending troops to the Korean War in 1950 and continues to be a comprehensive strategic partner with Korea but also the enthusiasm of Canadians for K-Culture and the arts has been growing exponentially for the past decades. Now, Canadian interests in Korea have expanded beyond the cultural sphere to include global issues such as the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) of the Korean peninsula. SAW was established in 1973 and is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. As one of Canada's leading artist-run centers, SAW has actively enhanced the richness and seriousness of Canadian arts and culture. Many renowned Canadian artists have started their careers at SAW, making it a globally recognized institution. SAW hosts over 30,000 visitors annually as a major cultural institution in the Ottawa-Gatineau region. SAW runs the main gallery, Nordic Lab (an Indigenous contemporary art exhibition space), Club SAW, the Courtyard (an outdoor space), and the Rochon Residency space in collaboration with the City of Ottawa and the National Capital Commission. The exhibition also features various public events designed to generate dialogues surrounding the DMZ continuously throughout the exhibition and beyond. 1. Vernissage: Friday, October 13, 2023, 7 pm~midnight/ SAW (67 Nicholas St., Ottawa)  2. Panel discussion & Screening: Saturday, October 14, 2023, 5~8 pm/ KCC (101-150 Elgin St., Ottawa) 3. DMZ Reading with Riverbed: Wednesday, October 18, 2023, 7:30 pm/ Club SAW 4. Final viewing: Saturday, January 27, 2024         * 12 - 5 pm/ KCC ( 101-150 Elgin St., Ottawa)       ** 11 am - midnight/ SAW (67 Nicholas St., Ottawa) Negotiating Borders Efforts toward Harmony at the Borders Sunjung Kim REAL DMZ PROJECT Artistic Director This year marks the seventieth anniversary of the creation of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a result of the 1953 Armistice Agreement following the Korean War, which began in 1950. During this time, the DMZ, as a place reserved solely for army bases, has ironically become the most militarized of demilitarized zones. Due to restrictions on civilian entry, the DMZ is home to only animals and plants, aside from its military presence. Negotiating Borders—Ottawa is an exhibition that contemplates the various phenomena brought about by the division of South Korea and North Korea through the lens of contemporary art. In addition to commemorating the DMZ’s sense of place, its history, and the meaning of the divided nation, the exhibition also seeks to ponder the future of the DMZ. The artists participating in this exhibition approach the DMZ from diverse perspectives, ranging from political and historical themes, to the lives of residents of the civilian control zones developed around the DMZ over the past 70 years, and other various phenomena that derive from the North-South division of Korea. Furthermore, the artists attempt new explorations of the natural environment of the DMZ and its ecology as it has been built up throughout the last 70 years of national division. DMZ The DMZ, which marks the boundary between South Korea and North Korea, was created 70 years ago, through the Armistice Agreement of 1953. At the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers in December 1945, where representatives from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia discussed how to manage the trusteeship of the Korean Peninsula following the end of Japanese colonial rule, a US-Soviet Joint Commission was established and a line drawn was along the 38 parallel to divide the peninsula into North and South. The North and South were then put under the military administrations of Russia and the United States respectively, and although there were efforts to form a unified government, the South established the government of the Republic of Korea on August 15, 1948, and the North established the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on September 9, 1948. The Korean War began in 1950 after a North-led attack, and on July 27, 1953, a ceasefire was announced based on the Armistice Agreement between the representatives of the UN and those of North Korea and China. The war wound down without a formal termination, but rather with an armistice, and each party agreed to retreat 2 kilometers in either direction from the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), effectively creating a demilitarized zone spanning a total length of 248 kilometers. Marking the southernmost end of the DMZ is the Southern Limit Line (SLL), and to the north is the Northern Limit Line (NLL). In the areas 5 to 20 kilometers from the SLL, a Civilian Control Zone (CCZ) also came to be developed. A demilitarized zone, as defined by international law, comprises four elements: demilitarization, a certain amount of buffer area, separation or isolation of military forces, and the installation of surveillance measures. However, the Korean DMZ and its surrounding areas are currently some of the heaviest armed areas in the world, with sparks ready to fly at a moment’s notice. This fact of temporary armistice and the ongoing conflict between South Korea and North Korea have put down deep roots within our daily lives, on both conscious and unconscious levels. Negotiating Borders The exhibition Negotiating Borders has its origins in the REAL DMZ PROJECT. Begun in Cheorwon, South Korea in 2012, the project brings together artists from Korea and from elsewhere in the world to explore the tensions between South Korea and North Korea, the social impact of the division, and efforts to overcome it. The REAL DMZ PROJECT carried out exhibitions and other commissioning work from 2012 to 2016, focusing on Cheorwon’s national security tourism routes and the village of Yangji-ri, and held a large-scale exhibition in Culture Station Seoul 284 in 2019 that encompassed all of its works to date. This was followed by exhibitions held overseas, in locations including Denmark, Brazil, the UK, France, South Africa, Australia, and Germany. During September 1-23, 2023, DMZ Exhibition: Checkpoint was held in Paju, Gyeonggido, at Dora Observatory, a former military observation post (OP), and at Camp Greaves, a former US military base. The exhibition Negotiating Borders—Ottawa will be on view from October 13, 2023, to January 27, 2024, at the Korean Cultural Centre in Ottawa, Canada, and at the SAW Gallery. The two exhibition halls are configured as to set the various images of the DMZ face to face with each other, just as the South and North have reflected each other like mirrors throughout the past 70 years. The SAW Gallery will showcase works shedding light on the South-North relationship, the state of the divided nation, and the people who live through that division, as well as the lives of residents of the Civilian Control Zone, mainly the village of Yangji-ri in Cheorwon. The exhibits in the Korean Cultural Centre will focus on the natural environment of the DMZ area, in which humans have not been able to intervene for 70 years as well as efforts to achieve harmony. SAW Gallery  Entering the SAW Gallery, the viewer is immediately faced with Jane Jin Kaisen’s Apertures / Specters / Rifts (2016), a lightbox of reddish hue holding 36 black-and-white photographs. These photographs include those taken by Danish journalist Kate Fleron in 1951 when she visited North Korea as part of the Women’s International Democratic Federation, and those taken by Kaisen herself, an adoptee, as she traveled across the border from North to South in 2015 as one of thirty women in the international women’s delegation ‘Women Cross DMZ.’ HaeAhn Paul Kwon Kajander’s  Leave Without Absence, 2023  is strewn about here and there. The work of HaeAhn Paul Kwon Kajander involves casting and varnishing found items such as residential window grilles from the 70s and 80s and sewer grates from Panmunjeom. Sewers are crucial parts of the social infrastructure that discharge and circulate wastewater from daily life, although they remain hidden from view. Window security grilles, often shaped into grids or other geometric patterns, serve to distinguish the inside and outside of the home, and to protect the inside from the dangers of the outside. Minouk Lim’s It’s a Name I Gave Myself is a work based on broadcasted searches for families separated during the Korean War and its aftermath, collecting and reconstructing the cases in which participants in the search do not know their own names or years of birth. Chan Sook Choi’s work springs from an interest in the lives of the residents of villages within the Civilian Control Zone. Through works such as 60 Ho (2020), which focuses on the structure of villages and houses built up through land-reclamation projects for North-facing propaganda purposes, and Artificial Sun (2017), based on footage of the ubiquitous fan-heaters found throughout the village, especially in the homes of elderly women, Choi contemplates the lives of women migrants into the CCZ areas as products of the Cold War system. Jeewi Lee’s work involves a floor installation that divides the exhibition space in half by way of black and white pebbles, as well as drawings based on rubbings of bullet marks left on trees near the 38 parallel. The viewer is led to walk through the pebble-strewn ground in order to see the drawings, and in the process, the boundary between black and white gradually disappears. Finally, the viewer encounters Jin-me Yoon’s work Mul Maeum (2022). The work cuts across three regions in South Korea: a fishing village near Saemangeum, home to the world’s longest embankment; the village of Gangjeong on Jeju Island, partially destroyed for the purpose of building a naval base; and the military facilities built in the DMZ, where such interventions have resulted in shifts in human, natural, and environmental ecologies. Adrian Göllner presents drawings based on birdwatching sessions in Cheorwon accompanied by an expert on avian life.   Korean Cultural Centre Canada At the entrance of the Korean Cultural Centre, two video works can be viewed. One of the works hypothesizes what it would be like to install art in the access-limited areas of the DMZ, and uses a virtual-reality space to display pieces by Lee Bul, Minouk Lim, Kyungah Ham, Tobias Rehberger, and Superflex. The other is Dongsei Kim’s video work, A Construct the Koreas (Never) Made Together: Deconstructing the DMZ for the Imaginary—2019 (2019), which shares records of the process through which the DMZ came into being and the events that took place within it. Inside the Centre’s gallery, one can view Vine: Between and Traces (2023) by ikkibawiKrrr, a work illustrating abandoned houses overgrown with plant life in Jeongyeon-ri, Cheorwon, a village made part of the Civilian Control Zone in the 70s. The mural, in panorama format, reflects an image of the CCZ from which humans have disappeared and in which plants have taken over. Zoh Kyung Jin and Cho Hye Ryeong’s Parallel Botany (2023) reveals the differences between South Korea and North Korea that have grown more stark in the past 70 years by highlighting how the two lands now call the same plant by different names. Kyungah Ham’s work contains embroideries by North Korean seamstresses that the artist has contacted indirectly through brokers. It thus embodies the issues of labor, censorship, and border-crossing; “What you see is the unseen,” as the title indicates. Sojung Jun’s video work features a joint performance of a North Korean pianist and a South Korean pianist, conjuring an image of correspondence between the two Koreas. Lee Bul’s Study for Aubade V(1/5 Scale) (2019) is a maquette based on large-scale structures inspired by modernist architecture such as Tatlin’s Tower or the Eiffel Tower, built from the remnants of the 10 guard posts (GP) that were demolished following the Pyongyang Joint Declaration of 2018. Coda Negotiating Borders—Ottawa is distinct from previous exhibitions on the DMZ. Whereas other exhibitions have tended to involve works that focus on the fact of division itself and the social phenomena that spring from it, this exhibition concentrates on the DMZ’s sense of place by collecting and showcasing works based in Cheorwon, particularly the village of Yangji-ri, the locale of the REAL DMZ PROJECT for the past 10 years. In addition, research on the natural environment, fauna, and flora of the DMZ has been added as a new chapter in explorations of the DMZ. The exhibit in the Korean Cultural Centre, opening with a video that dreams of a future for the DMZ through virtual images of the DMZ space filled with gigantic installations of art, goes on to approach the DMZ in new ways through works that deal with the ecological and environmental facets of the DMZ, namely the animals, plants, and nonhuman elements remaining in the DMZ space closed off to humans, as well as works that present various ways to achieve harmony. The exhibition in the SAW Gallery brings together the efforts of boundary-crossing women in history, the work produced by the REAL DMZ PROJECT over the past 10 years centering on Yangji-ri, Cheorwon, and contributions by Canadian artists. The past seven decades have seen the end of the Cold War, but the DMZ, its product, yet remains. Ideologies operating through invisible forces have brought the Korean people to call the same plant by different names through 70 years of division. We do not know if the day will come when we will again use the same name, but efforts to draw out the meanings of the DMZ and to move beyond its boundaries must continue. Artists and Artworks  SAW Gallery  Jin-me Yoon Mul Maeum, 2022, Single channel video, 30min. 48 sec. Mul Maeum transverses three locations on the Korean peninsula to explore the consequence of extraction economies and military industry on the livelihood and lifeways of people, nature and marine environments. One of these locations is a fishing village near Saemangeum, home to the world’s longest seawall. The construction of the thirty-three kilometre wall has displaced the estuarine tidal flat that was once the natural habitat for migratory birds. A second location is the village of Gangjeong on Jeju Island, where the construction of the naval base has disrupted the sacred Gureombi rock. In Gangjeong, we encounter a Yemenis family, refugees who the artist met during an earlier research trip. The third site is the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea—ironically also one of the most richly bio-diverse areas in the region. Intercutting these three sites across three screens, Yoon’s work flows like water calling up the title Mul Maeum, directly translated, “Water, Mind-heart.” Adrian Göllner  Trace, 2023, mixed media, dimensions variable Trace presents an alternate mapping of the Korean DMZ based on birdwatching along this highly militarized border. In the 70 years since the Korean War, this 4 x 248 km divide has returned to nature and is now home to many rare birds and animals. In September 2023, Adrian Göllner travelled to South Korea to bear witness to its avian population. This line drawing stitches together the paths of his birdwatching excursions from Incheon to Cheorwon County. Chan Sook Choi 60 Ho, 2020, Single channel video installation, 21:9, Full HD, color, sound, loop, 24 min Artificial Sun, 2017, Single channel video installation, 3:12, Full HD, color, loop, 1:30 min 60 Ho (2020) details the personal narratives of women who settled in one of the 112 propaganda villages located up North at the Civilian Control Zone of the Demilitarized Zone. After the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, these villages were established for purposes of land-clearing and propaganda against North Korea. The village of Yangji-ri in Cheorwon, Gangwon-do, was also formed in response to political promises of cheap land and housing. The colorfully roofed houses all sport windows facing north—supposedly to facilitate observation of the enemy—but the insides are makeshift, each with its own complex structure. Under the patriarchal family-register system, the female migrants who lost their husbands to war, or to the mines scattered about their everyday living space, cannot claim ownership of their territory. Village soldiers begin to address them as just numbers. 60 Ho refers to a human reduced to a mere number in the place where she resides. In Artificial Sun (2017), based on footage of the ubiquitous fan heaters found throughout the homes of these elderly women, brings warmth that burns brighter than the sun to the lives of these numbered female migrants. Jane Jin Kaisen Apertures | Specters | Rifts, 2016, Triptych handcrafted oak light box, 36 B&W Photographs, 52.8 x 508.4 x 10 cm Apertures | Specters | Rifts consists of a triptych red-light box containing 36 black-and-white photographs portraying North Korea through the lens of two international women’s delegations. In May 1951 Danish journalist and women’s rights advocate Kate Flerson, visited North Korea as part of a delegation organized by the Women’s International Democratic Federation. Upon her return she published Fra Nordkorea. Indtryk fra en Rejse til Verdens Ende (From North Korea. Impressions from the End of the World) about her experience. Seventy years later, in May 2015, Kaisen—born in Jeju and adopted to Denmark—visited the North as part of Women Cross DMZ, an international women’s delegation consisting of 30 women. Half of the photographs in the lightbox stem from Fleron’s archive, while the remainder were taken by Kaisen herself, visualizing the persistent trauma of war and polarization of the Cold War.  Minouk Lim It’s a Name I Gave Myself, 2018, Single channel video, 20:36 min Farewell, 2011, Children's rainboot, sponge, paraffin, glue, glass case, 52 x 67 x 60 cm To commemorate the 33rd anniversary of the Korean War and 30 years since the Armistice, one South Korean broadcasting station planned Finding Separated Families to find those who were unable to meet each other. The division of the two powers into South and North Korea caused by the Cold War inflicted collective wounds on the Korean people. As the ideological battle continued and each side gained and lost advantages countless times, it was common for parents, brothers, and sisters to become separated on the path of refuge which divided their fate into life or death. Through the 138-day broadcast, a total of 10,000 families were able to reunite in South Korea alone. On being faced with these scenes, Minouk Lim saw the space of the broadcast as a place for conversations that bring back the memories and history that we have forgotten. Minouk Lim’s It’s a Name I Gave Myself is a short video that mainly includes the reunion of separated family members who lost their families at such a young age that they cannot remember their names. The large lighting object that is placed alongside the video is an attempt at re-exploring the “impossible” by reproducing the exhibition space as a virtual broadcasting station. Jeewi Lee FRAKTUR (Fracture), 2018, Installation – gravel, Dimensions variable INZISION (Incision), 2018, Hanji-paper, Chinese ink, 70 x 140 cm (paper), 120 x 160 cm (framed) A German artist of Korean descent, Jeewi Lee currently works and resides in Berlin. She presents her work INZISION (Incision), a rendition of five trees near the 38th parallel using the traditional Eastern method of takbon rubbing that uses ink to copy out the original forms of carved patterns from stone monuments, trees, and other objects onto traditional Hanji-paper. The artist planned out a total of 10 equidistant topographical points – five in South Korea and five in North Korea – and selected trees which met her requirements on age and location. The trees selected by Lee are all ones which grew before the 1945 North-South division, and as such, serve as living evidence which vividly recalls the trauma of the Korean War. It is exhibited alongside FRAKTUR (Fracture), an installation piece in which black and white gravel divides the exhibition space in half and creates a boundary. Visitors directly experience walking on the field of gravel to view INZISION (Incision). The black and white pebbles are gradually mixed together by the movements of the audience, and so are a metaphor for the future of North and South Korea in which their borders, which appear strong, gradually blur due to mutual interaction. This is also the artist’s hope. HaeAhn Paul Kwon Kajander Leave Without Absence, 2023 Site-responsive installation with copper, mirrored acrylic, inkjet prints, silk, aluminum, metal sewer grate, natural lacquer, acrylic paint, sand, rebar, wire, gypsum, thread, compact discs, wood, cement, found footwear, textiles. Dimensions variable.  HaeAhn Paul Kwon Kajander’s sculptural arrangements draw formally from a variety of sources: a scarecrow found in the Demilitarized Zone(DMZ) in Gyodong-do, common drainage grates from South Korea, and the curb of the Joint Security Area (JSA, known as Panmunjom). These forms are materially translated using elements such as natural lacquer on linen, photographs, found objects, etc. Challenging material hierarchies, comparative analyses, and reductive binaries between similar/different, familiar/strange, in/out, the artists invite viewers to contemplate a more nuanced complexity in considering formulations of self/other reified by the notion of the nation-state. A background color code of a scarecrow’s image is #5b92e5 (also known as United Nations Blue), which is used prominently on the outbuildings of the JSA. Found in rice paddies within several kilometers of North Korea, this scarecrow strucks the artists as a sentinel of paranoid vigilance and agonized (self) surveillance. The artists include this image as an unconscious cipher, echoing the internalized split subjectivity of an ideologically divided nation that has endured the tension under a cease-fire.  KCC Gallery Lee Bul Study for Aubade V (1/5 Scale), 2019, Cast steel (collected from demolished checkpoint in DMZ), glass beads, LED lights, mixed media, 200 x 70 x 70 cm  Premiered at the 2019 edition of the Venice Biennale, Aubade V is a large-scale casted steel tower. Its design incorporates inspirational elements from modernist architecture, such as Tatlin’s Constructivist Tower and the Eiffel Tower. The steel structure is made from barbed wire debris collected from a guard’s post in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which was demolished in 2018 as part of an inter-Korean military accord. Attached to the structure are various light signals that flicker anxiously, failing to communicate their message to the audience, as many will not be able to decode—or even recognize—Morse Code or the International Code of Signals. Moreover, the English text in LED lights may appear more familiar, yet it states: “For the next 1 million years, the cycle will carry the obliquity between 22˚ 13' 44" and 24˚ 20' 50",” delaying direct or easy understanding. Lee Bul’s Aubade V evokes insecurity and uncertainty, rather than utopian or heroic ambitions. Study for Aubade V (1/5 Scale) is a study model for the work Aubade V. Kyungah Ham What you see is the unseen / Chandeliers for Five Cities DSK M 02-D-05, 06, 07 (Triptych), 2018-2019, North Korean hand embroidery, silk threads on cotton, middleman, smuggling, bribe, tension, anxiety, censorship, ideology, wooden frame, approx. 1200 hrs / 1 person (each panel), 105 x 151 cm (each panel) / 151 x 315 cm (overall) The Embroidery Project that Kyungah Ham has been involved in since the late 2000s was inspired by her chance discovery of a North Korean propaganda leaflet in front of her house. Seeing the leaflet, she had the idea of artistic communication with an anonymous partner in the North. She sought to reach out toward the lives of North Koreans, which are restricted, that stands in sharp contrast with South Korea’s highly digitalized lives, where all manner of information is available at the click of a mouse. The Chandelier series, one of Ham's embroidery projects presented in this exhibition, was inspired by the North Korean card stunt documentary. A close-up of a boy's face appeared on a television screen as thousands of people displayed large-scale propaganda images, each showing individual color charts. The image of the boy's face and card stunt overlapped with the image of a chandelier embroidered with pixels one by one.  Sojung Jun Early Arrival of Future, 2015, Single channel video, stereo sound, HD 16:9, 10:08 min Sojung Jun's Early Arrival of Future documented the process of reaching a perform together through a series of encounters, conversations, and practice between North Korean defector pianist Cheol-woong Kim and South Korean pianist Eun-kyung Uhm. Against the grain of time and ideology, the two pianists sit before their instruments, talking about North and South Korean music as they return to the past—and memories of early childhood in particular—in an attempt to bridge a 70-year gap. The two pianists carefully combine the songs that they would have murmured together in the past, songs that have been forgotten for seven decades, compromise homogeneity. Their collaboration Sinabro is a melodic variation of Yonggang Ginari and Eommaya Nunaya, focusing on jung-im-mu-hwang-tae scale (the basic scale for Korean traditional music). The arrangement reaches harmonies of Dondol Arirang and Gangangsullae as a metaphor to the harmony of the North and South. Zoh Kyung Jin/Cho Hye Ryeong Parallel Botany, 2023, Plant/Stone(Basalt), Dimensions variable Plants, by their nature, are apolitical beings. However, South and North Korea have different names for more than half of the plants. The plants in this garden bear two different names, despite belonging to the same species. The collective nature of the 22 species of this garden represents the parallel worlds. Parallel Botany is a garden installed at Camp Greaves for DMZ Exhibition: Checkpoint (23.8.11-11.5) as part of the 2023 DMZ Open Festival. The North Korean names were cited by a North Korean defector while the South Korean plant names were cited by the artist.  Plant Lists(South Korea, North Korea, Scientific Names) * 산사나무-찔광나무. Crataegus pinnatifida * 수수꽃다리-넓은잎정향나무. Syringa oblata Lindl. var. dilatata * 고광나무-조선산매화. Philadelphus schrenkii  * 귀룽나무-구름나무. Prunus padus L. * 함박꽃나무-목란 Magnolia sieboldii * 백당나무-접시꽃나무. Viburnum opulus L.  * 회양목-고양나무. Buxus microphylla var. koreana * 쥐똥나무-검정알나무. Ligustrum obtusifolium * 쑥부쟁이-푸른산국. Aster yomena * 냉초-숨위나물. Veronicastrum sibiricum  * 부처꽃-두렁꽃. Lythrum anceps * 산박하-깨잎오리방풀. Isodon inflexus  * 벼룩이울타리-긴잎모래별꽃. Eremogone juncea * 산국-기린국화. Chrysanthemum lavanduliofolium  * 큰꿩의다리-잔가락풀. Thalictrum kemense * 노루오줌-노루풀. Astilbe chinensis * 배초향-방아풀. Agastache rugosa  * 용담-초룡담. Gentiana scabra * 까치수염-꽃고리풀. Lysimachia barystachys * 도깨비부채-수레부채. Rodgersia podophylla * 마타리-맛타리. Patrinia scabiosifolia   * 실새풀-새풀. Calamagrostis arundinacea Volunteers: Son Jung Hee, Lee Ae Kyung, Kim Lee Kyung, Jung Eun Ha, Kim Myuoung Yoon HaeAhn Paul Kwon Kajander Leave Without Absence, 2023 Site-responsive installation with copper, mirrored acrylic, inkjet prints, silk, aluminum, metal sewer grate, natural lacquer, acrylic paint, sand, rebar, wire, gypsum, thread, compact discs, wood, cement, found footwear, textiles. Dimensions variable.  ikkibawiKrrr  Vine: Between and Traces, 2023, Plants, acrylic on canvas, 160 x 800 cm On the walls of the gallery, ikkibawiKrrr presents a work of graffiti that uses a panorama format to show plants collected from abandoned houses overgrown with plant life in Jeongyeon-ri, Cheorwon, a village part of the Civilian Control Zone. The plants that live in the DMZ are granted access to inhabit a place where people typically cannot go. In that sense, it is an environment eroded by contradiction. It is like a hidden setting or a “space in between'' that cannot be perceived because it is off limits to people. Plants are the intruders that are allowed to enter this space, which is both a buffer zone and a place of tension. ikkibawiKrrr records the marks left by these burrowing vines, while also expressing a sense of mourning for this environment. Dongsei Kim  A Construct the Koreas (Never) Made Together: Deconstructing the DMZ for the Imaginary – 2019, 2019, animation, 11 min. 23 sec. Dongsei Kim’s animated film, A Construct the Koreas (Never) Made Together: Deconstructing the DMZ for the Imaginary (2019), analyzes the Korean DMZ through five different lenses. The first lens examines the DMZ through history and illustrates how the DMZ has fluctuated over time. The second lens demonstrates how the DMZ functions as a solid barrier that maintains and reinforces the divided Korea. The third lens reveals ways in which the DMZ connects the two countries and is transgressed despite its being an impenetrable barrier. The fourth lens zooms out to take in Northeast Asia and trace the paths of North Koreans who partake in the 5,000 km clandestine escape route. The final lens shows how the two Koreas are starting finally to literally deconstruct the border, a remnant of the Cold War. RDP Online Exhibition Originally Shown in 2021 during the COVID-19 lockdown, this online exhibition introduces works by Lee Bul, Minouk Lim, Kyungah Ham, Tobias Rehberger, and Superflex who conceived their projects with borderless minds and unimaginable visions. This exhibition offers them a borderless virtual environment where no constrains exist. It simulates the DMZ, maneuvering the line between reality and imagination. Designed by the media artist duo Roomtone, the virtual DMZ space partakes in proposing for the future of the border area.  CREDIT:  Hosted by the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange  Organized by the Real DMZ Project Sponsored by the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism Curated by Sunjung Kim Project by Space for Contemporary Art Artists  and their works - SUPERFLEX, One Two Three Swing! - Tobias Rehberger, Duplex House - Lee Bul, Aubade V - Kyungah Ham, Are you lonely, too?  - Minouk Lim, DMZ Portable Keeper and  - Roomtone Inquiries:  Korean Cultural Centre Canada (613-233-8008/ canada@korea.kr) SAW Centre (613-236-6181/ info@saw-centre.com)