North Korean Art: Complexity within Simplicity
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Korean Cultural Service, 460 Park Avenue (57th Street), 6th Floor
Free admission; refreshments provided
Art is huge in North Korea. The Mansudae Art Studio in Pyongyang is the largest government-supported art community in the world. Artists and artworks are highly regarded throughout the country.
For the outside world, it remains an unexplored territory although there has been some limited, but growing, interest. Is there “art for art’s sake” in North Korea?
Is all of the art produced there entirely propaganda and nothing else? How accurate is general perception of North Korean art in the West?
Professor Muhn will share his insights gained through years of research on the subject. He will discuss the scope and variety of artistic expression of North Korean art and its meaning in the contemporary art world.
BG Muhn
BG Muhn, Artist and Professor of Art, Department of Art and Art History, Georgetown University
BG Muhn has achieved noteworthy professional recognition through solo exhibitions in venues such as Stux Gallery in Chelsea, New York City, Ilmin Museum of Art in Seoul and the American University Museum in Washington, DC. He also has received acclaim in reviews and interviews in The New York Times, Art in America and CNN.
For the last several years, Professor Muhn has taken interest in and studied the relatively unknown field of North Korean art. He has made numerous research trips to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) or North Korea, and visited museums, exhibitions and artists’ studios. He has been giving talks on North Korean art at academic venues including Harvard, American, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins and Columbia universities.
His on-site, firsthand research including interviews of numerous artists, art historians as well as faculty members and students of the prestigious Pyongyang Art College will culminate in his forthcoming book on the subject.
