View from Within and Without: Art, Architecture, and Archaeology of North Korea

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

The Golden Lion awarded to the Korean Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale featuring North Korean art and architecture and the upcoming exhibition of North Korean paintings at the Drents Museum in the Netherlands suggest a growing interest in North Korean art. In North Korea, art serves to legitimate the North Korean system and its leaders. An examination of art reveals how ideology transpires through art, illuminating how art contributes to sustaining the North Korean state. Bringing together paintings, architecture, and archaeology, this panel shows how art serves as a conduit for understanding and problematizing North Korea’s official narrative and how art can be a space for contact with North Koreans. Marsha Haufler begins by comparing the reinvention of the new Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum to its Soviet-style predecessor and older monuments and considering some of its political implications. Min-Kyung Yoon examines the themes of creativity, socialist imaginary, and tensions in paintings, including paintings from the Venice Architecture Biennale. Koen De Ceuster examines the term realism in socialist realist theme paintings from the Drents Museum exhibition. Finally, Elisabeth Chabanol traces the genealogy of her joint excavation project of the Kaesong fortress with the National Authority for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of the DPRK, culminating in a France-DPRK exhibition of artifacts, drawings, and maps at the Pyongyang Folk Museum, providing an unprecedented look into the North Korean art world and how North Korean art historians view the Koryo period.

Area of Study

• Korea

Session Organizer

• Min-Kyung Yoon, École française d'Extrême-Orient

Chair

• Koen De Ceuster, Leiden University

Individual Presentations

• The New Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum and Visual Narratives of Pyongyang - Marsha Haufler, University of Kansas

• Visualizing the Socialist Imaginary in North Korean Art - Min-Kyung Yoon, École française d'Extrême-Orient

• Truer than Life: Reality in North Korean Socialist Realist Paintings - Koen De Ceuster, Leiden University

• France-Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) Joint Exhibition in Pyongyang - Elisabeth Chabanol, École française d'Extrême-Orient

Discussant

• Koen De Ceuster, Leiden University