press release

The REAL DMZ PROJECT 2015 invites Magnus Bärtås, Minouk Lim, Tatsuo Miyajima and Ingo Niermann, whose works have long concentrated on the DMZ, to join the 49 artists/teams who exhibited in the downtown of Dongsong in Cheorwon-gun, Gangwon-do for ten days prior to the current exhibition. Unlike previous projects, which centered on hard-to-access sites near the Civilian Control Line, this year's exhibition in Dongsong extended its geographical parameter to the downtown area where commercial and cultural facilities are concentrated, and strove to engage with the local community at a more intimate level. The exhibition at Art Sonje Center is an expansion of the exhibition in Dongsong, and attempts to raise questions on the DMZ area, where the history of the past and the life of the present, political tension and daily life all coexist. For the current exhibition, participants reflected upon the different site-specificities of the DMZ border area and the art museum in Seoul, and conceptualized the exhibition according to various contextual components, such as the types of audiences and the public elements of the space.