North Korea: A Unique Country

Cha Yong Ho - Azalea (2013)



“North Korean art – explain the curators Pier Luigi Cecioni and Eugenio Cecioni - is contemporary by definition in the sense that it is created today, but there is no contemporary experimentation as we understand it in the West. The artists’ research is directed more towards technical competence and mastery than content. The conceptual and the abstract, even when artists come across it on rare trips to the West or in publications, are of no interest: a common reaction in the face of such works is sincere, good-natured fun, not mockery. One does not sense any echo of the debate on contemporary art that characterizes the so-called international art scene. Art is an essential part of every culture, it is an expression and representation thereof: North Korea has had significant contact with only a handful of countries and this isolation has preserved its native footprint, has preserved its traditions.”

Jo Won Il - Let Us Make Sports Popular in Every Company (2013)



The curators consider the process that allowed the collection of the artworks for Imago Mundi: “Finding the works shown here was, in a certain sense, simple. The vast majority of the best North Korean artists work within the Mansudae Art Studio. After a detailed discussion in Pyongyang, the Mansudae Art Studio agreed to participate and selected the artists, each of whom then decided what they wished to accomplish. A single Korean counterpart was all that was needed. This collection, with its considerable number of works (albeit in a small format) that will remain permanently in the West and a catalogue of this importance, is a particularly significant testimony to North Korean art and the quality of what is probably the largest centre of artistic production in the world.”

Ri Bong Suk - The Woman is Like the Flower (2013)

The 113 North Korean artists in the Imago Mundi project operated in this context characterized by a broad organizational structure. “Men and women, young and old, - summarizes Luciano Benetton - have composed a unique and surprising collection. In a certain sense suspended in time but, paradoxically, capable of helping us rediscover art as a vehicle for understanding and communication which, with its universal language, can clarify and stimulate, can bring us closer, promote understanding and the acceptance of differences. Art that can contribute to the opening of new roads. Even astride the thirty-eighth parallel.”