BERN, Switzerland — Against a fiery sky,
North Korea’s former
leaders Kim Il Sung and
Kim Jong Il watch with beaming smiles as missiles whiz
above them in bursts of light and clouds of smoke. The painting — “The
Missiles,” by Pak Yong Chol — is one of collector
Uli Sigg’s prized
possessions, acquired through persistence, persuasion and contacts forged
during his term as Switzerland’s ambassador to North Korea in the 1990s.
اضافة اعلان
Sigg said he used to visit the North Korean national art museum,
in the capital, Pyongyang, whose works glorify the country’s strength. He said
he was already familiar with the socialist-realist style of art favored by the
communist governments of China and the Soviet Union, but he was struck by North
Korea’s more emotional variant.
“It was then that I decided I had to acquire an artwork,” Sigg
said in a recent video interview. “You can buy paintings showing happy laborers
with rosy cheeks. But I wanted one with the leaders.”
His first approaches to North Korean officials were rebuffed, he
said. Images of the dictators “were not allowed to be shown outside North
Korea, except in the embassies — and they are certainly not in private hands,”
he said. “That was unimaginable.”
Instead, Sigg was offered a portrait of himself, which would be
painted by one of the regime’s leading artists. “I said, ‘I don’t want a
portrait of me. I want a portrait of the leaders,’” he said.
Sigg eventually persuaded the officials, he said, and built one
of the most important collections of North Korean art outside the country.
Pieces from the collection have recently gone on display at the Kunstmuseum
Bern, in Switzerland, in a rare presentation of North Korean art in the West.
More unusual still, the show displays the works alongside art from the country’s
neighbor and enemy, South Korea.
Running through Sept. 5, “Border Crossings” was “sensitive” for
both sides, Sigg said. Showing South Korean art is illegal in the North, and
for many years, North Korean art was banned in the South. Even before the
exhibition opened in late April, it prompted protests from both Koreas. Sigg,
who left Switzerland’s foreign service in 1998, has needed his diplomatic
skills again.
Technically still at war, the two Koreas are separated by the 250km-long
Demilitarized Zone fortified on both sides with barbed wire and anti-tank
defenses. No one is allowed across the border. Although the artists of the divided
peninsula share a common cultural tradition, they work in different worlds.
Those in the South enjoy creative freedom in a society whose pop
music has spread across the world; Seoul, the capital, is a major Asian art hub
with a lively, diverse gallery scene. In the North, all professional artists
are organized in two official studios that work under the strict control of the
communist dictatorship, isolated from international influences.
The only paintings on public display in North Korea are official
commissions from those studios. With dramatic theatricality, but in a realistic
style, the country’s leaders are portrayed almost as religious icons, while
workers appear as heroes, and landscapes accentuate the power and grandeur of
its natural scenery.
Sigg said he hoped the exhibition illuminates the contrasts
between the two societies. “The core interest for me was this tension between
the two Koreas which once formed one cultural space,” Sigg said. “This
exhibition makes this tension more concrete.”
Sigg said he began collecting South Korean art in 2008, noting
that the works he has acquired all address the division of Korea. The pain of
the rupture immediately confronts visitors to the Bern museum with a painting
of the Demilitarized Zone in the entry hall.
“Between Red,” by Sea Hyun-lee, an artist from the South, is
painted completely in shades of that color. Devoid of people, it echoes
traditional Korean landscape painting with an elevated view of curving rivers,
jagged mountains, clusters of abandoned houses and blossoming orchards whose
fruit may have gone unharvested since the area between the two Koreas was
sealed off in 1953.
Sojung Jun’s video work, “Early Arrival of the Future,” explores
the shared heritage of North and South Koreans. She invited two pianists — Kim
Cheol-woong, who defected from the North, and Uhm Eun-kyung, from the South —
to arrange and perform a duet combining traditional melodies from a North
Korean folk song and a South Korean nursery rhyme. In the filmed performance,
they face each other across two grand pianos, and close-ups show their subtle
coordination by eye contact and facial expression.
But art can divide as well as connect — as Sigg knows too well.
He said he had hesitated a long time before deciding to stage the exhibition in
Bern, recognizing that it risked destroying his relations with North Korea. He
said it was possible that he would now be denied entry if he applied for a
visa.
“What is new this time is that I am facing protests from two
states — usually, it’s just one,” he said. “But I am relatively relaxed. You
have to have a thick skin when it comes to contemporary art.”
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