Mansudae Master Class

2013 - Photography (Photography)

Che Onejoon


For the last few years, Che Onejoon has been focusing on the relationships between African countries and North Korea. He has attempted to interpret the ongoing Cold War in the Korean peninsula from a new geopolitical perspective. His resulting body of work focuses on the memorial monuments, statues and architectures that were built in 13 different African countries by North Korean government. Not often talked about, these “gifts” represent North Korea’s strategies using art as propaganda tool to gain support of African dictators in worldwide instances such as the United Nations. Though presumed to blend native African art, the monuments actually display more of North Korean socialist realism. The project is named after North Korea’s massive creative agency called Mansudae Art Studio established in 1959 by the order of Kim Il-sung to build monuments and statues for free, in Africa but not only. Che’s Mansudae Master Class project is a culminated study on cultural diplomacy, military alliance, translated forms of socialist realism, and images of utopia. Che’s photographs are frontal views of the monuments built by North Korea in the different African countries. Yet, the artist detaches the monuments from their original contexts so it becomes difficult to know where these architectures are located: in Senegal, in North Korea, or elsewhere. For example, t he African Renaissance Monument (2014) features the monument built in 2010 in Dakar, capital of the Senegal, a gigantic bronze statue to herald a new era of the continent.


Che Onejoon started working with photography in mandatory military service as an evidence photographer for the South Korean Combat Police recording different incidents for proof. Working with film, photographs, installations, and archives, Che’s research-based works deal with specific places of Korean society that connote the social and political changes that penetrate modern to contemporary history of the Korean peninsula. Studying the ruins of militarized modernity, Che presents the traces of erasures as sites of negation, disorder, and desertion.


Colors:



Other related works, blended automatically  
» see more

My Utopia
© » KADIST

Che Onejoon

2018

Che Onejoon’s unsettling video My Utopia opens with a round table of women asking and answering the questions “Who am I? Where did I come from? Where should I go?” One of the women featured is Monique Macías, the daughter of Francisco Macías Nguema, the first Prime Minister of Equatorial Guinea...

Related works sharing similar palette  
» see more

Sundown (Number Twenty)
© » KADIST

Xaviera Simmons

2019

Xaviera Simmons often employs her own body and collected materials in the service of her photographs and performances...

Daniel Clowes interviewed by Rene de Guzman
© » KADIST

Daniel Clowes is a graphic novelist, screenwriter, and Bay Area treasure...

Book List on Post-Colonial Theory from the C& Library
© » CONTEMPORARYAND

Book List on Post-Colonial Theory from the C& Library | Contemporary And search for something search C& AMÉRICA LATINA EN FR MEMBERSHIP EN FR Editorial All Editorial Features Installation Views Inside the Library Interviews News Opinions Events All Events Art Fairs Conferences Exhibitions Festivals Performances Screenings Talks / Workshops C& Projects C& Artists’ Editions C& Commissions C& Center of Unfinished Business Show me your shelves! C& Education Mentoring Program Critical Writing Workshops Lectures / Seminars Membership Opportunities Print C& Audio Archive On Tour Places Explore IN CONVERSATION INSTALLATION VIEW WE GOT ISSUES DETOX LABORATORY OF SOLIDARITY CONSCIOUS CODES CURRICULUM OF CONNECTIONS LOVE ACTUALLY OVER THE RADAR BLACK CULTURES MATTER INSIDE THE LIBRARY LOOKING BACK Follow About Contact Newsletter Advertise Imprint Data protection Membership Contemporary And (C&) is funded by: Editorial All Editorial Features Installation Views Inside the Library Interviews News Opinions Events All Events Art Fairs Conferences Exhibitions Festivals Performances Screenings Talks / Workshops C& Projects C& Artists’ Editions C& Commissions C& Center of Unfinished Business Show me your shelves! C& Education Mentoring Program Critical Writing Workshops Lectures / Seminars Membership Opportunities Print C& Audio Archive On Tour Places Explore IN CONVERSATION INSTALLATION VIEW WE GOT ISSUES DETOX LABORATORY OF SOLIDARITY CONSCIOUS CODES CURRICULUM OF CONNECTIONS LOVE ACTUALLY OVER THE RADAR BLACK CULTURES MATTER INSIDE THE LIBRARY LOOKING BACK GO TO C& AMÉRICA LATINA About Contact Newsletter Advertise Imprint Data protection Membership C& Center of Unfinished Business Book List on Post-Colonial Theory from the C& Library Our library offers a wide selection of books that are connected to the topic of (post-)colonialism in various ways and help us to understand the now...

Octavia E. Butler Papers: mssOEB 1-9062 II (The L.A. Area)
© » KADIST

American Artist

2022

American Artist is engaged in a multiyear research project that traces and teases various interconnections between the life and work of science fiction author Octavia E...

Other works by: » Che Onejoon  
» see more

My Utopia
© » KADIST

Che Onejoon

2018

Che Onejoon’s unsettling video My Utopia opens with a round table of women asking and answering the questions “Who am I? Where did I come from? Where should I go?” One of the women featured is Monique Macías, the daughter of Francisco Macías Nguema, the first Prime Minister of Equatorial Guinea...

Related works found in the same semantic group  
» see more

Tourisme International
© » KADIST

Marie Voignier

2014

Tourisme International was shot as the recording of a show on the scale of a country...

Collecting Stories: Hong Gyu Shin - via Christie's
© » LARRY'S LIST

The dynamic young Korean Hong Gyu Shin has a voracious desire to educate himself about art...

Photographing the unrecognised Lumbee tribe in North Carolina
© » I-D VICE PHOTO

Photographing the unrecognised Lumbee tribe in North Carolina advertisement...

Imjingawa
© » KADIST

Hwayeon Nam

2017

Imjingawa is Hwayeon Nam’s first foray into borrowing from the documentary form...