Curatorial Statement

Inherited memory – War, violence, displacement and discrimination are deeply individual experiences but their memories touch all living in the same space-time. Such catastrophic events persist as communal traumas across decades and multiple generations: they become lived experiences even to later generations who did not experience them directly.

The communal violence of Japanese colonial rule, divisive politics in the liberation space, the subsequent war and the final division of Korea are traumas etched deep in the Korean Peninsula. The Korean War and division impact all mechanisms of thought and engagement. In particular, the City of Gimpo, located at the heart of the Han River estuary, has inherited the memory of “losing a river”—a dynamic and life-giving space of water.

Inherited memories persist in the time-space of Korea’s modern history in two forms: ‘squares and borders’.

The memory of the square “plaza” that defended democracy still persists and continues to unfold, while the “border” is frozen in the past and divides space into north and south and separates lives and thought. This border is the military demarcation line, the DMZ, which separates South and North Korea and extends east to west across land, rivers, and seas.

The 1953 Armistice Agreement that created the boundaries of the DMZ, treats land and waterways differently. The Han River is an estuary where the sea flows in, where the north and the south face each other across a waterway. In Gimpo, it was designated as a “Neutral Navigation Area” or “Free Zone” where civilian ships could function. It was to be controlled by the South and North, together, for civilian maritime traffic. But this never happened.

In 2018, under a new agreement between the North and the South, the estuary of the Han River was designated as a joint water use area. Can we transform our inherited memories of a space that has been closed off for 70 years to a space of peace and cooperation?
The “Free Zone”—a waterway that still cannot be crossed even though civilian navigation is allowed—is an inherited memory. Artists, through their work and imagination, attempt to cross the closed and lost river.

This exhibition suggests that works of art can channel and move beyond persistent generational traumas.

-Monica Hye Yeon Jun, Independent Curator

Exhibited by:

ReflectSpace Gallery

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Curatorial Statement
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