My Utopia
2018 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
21:43 minutes
Che Onejoon
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. After Equatorial Guinea and North Korea signed a treaty in the early 1970s, Nguema had sent his young daughter to live in North Korea, where she and her siblings were adopted by Kim Il-Sung, the first Supreme Leader of North Korea. After Nguema was overthrown during a military coup and later executed in 1979, Monique continued to live in Pyongyang until 1994. My Utopia interweaves actual documentary footage from Macías’ life with highly choreographed, cinematically shot scenes of actors playing child and adult versions of Macías, as well as North Korean figures from her life recounting their memories of her. The characters switch between languages, voices, and styles of performance, and Che occasionally breaks the fourth wall by revealing the staged sets in which the actors perform. This story takes place within a Russian nesting doll of performativity and narrative modes; one can never be quite sure of what is fact or fiction. In a continuation of Che’s research on the relationships between African countries and North Korea, My Utopia is formally tight but conceptually expansive, raising incisive questions about nationality, nativity, belonging, and the ways in which the kaleidoscopic truth is conditioned on history and politics. As we are asked to consider both the extraordinary circumstances of Macías’ life and the ways in which the North Korean social apparatus has made her simultaneously significant and alien, Che extends this interrogation beyond the state lines of North and South Korea, Africa and Asia. After all, how much of our individual sense of self is inherited from the state’s account of its own history? How much of our “truth” is performed, how much of it moves diasporically, and how much agency do we have in its construction?
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
© » KADIST
Che Onejoon
2013For the last few years, Che Onejoon has been focusing on the relationships between African countries and North Korea...
Related works sharing similar palette
» see more
© » KADIST
Nao Bustamante
2010Silver & Gold combines video, performance, and original costumes into a self-proclaimed “filmformance” that evokes the legendary filmmaker Jack Smith and his tribute to 1940s Dominican movie starlet Maria Montez in a magical and joyfully twisted exploration of race, glamour, sexuality, and the silver screen...
© » ART & OBJECT
Colombia Wants to Recover $20 Billion from Storied Shipwreck, San José | Art & Object Skip to main content Subscribe to our free e-letter! Webform Your Email Address Role Art Collector/Enthusiast Artist Art World Professional Academic Country USA Afghanistan Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antarctica Antigua & Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Ascension Island Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia & Herzegovina Botswana Bouvet Island Brazil British Indian Ocean Territory British Virgin Islands Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Canary Islands Cape Verde Caribbean Netherlands Cayman Islands Central African Republic Ceuta & Melilla Chad Chile China Christmas Island Clipperton Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia Comoros Congo - Brazzaville Congo - Kinshasa Cook Islands Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Curaçao Cyprus Czechia Côte d’Ivoire Denmark Diego Garcia Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Falkland Islands Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guernsey Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Heard & McDonald Islands Honduras Hong Kong SAR China Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Isle of Man Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jersey Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kosovo Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macao SAR China Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Myanmar (Burma) Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands North Korea North Macedonia Norway Oman Outlying Oceania Pakistan Palau Palestinian Territories Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Pitcairn Islands Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda Réunion Samoa San Marino Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Sint Maarten Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Georgia & South Sandwich Islands South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka St...
Other works by: » Che Onejoon
» see more
© » KADIST
Che Onejoon
2013For the last few years, Che Onejoon has been focusing on the relationships between African countries and North Korea...
Related works found in the same semantic group
» see more
© » KADIST
In this interview shot at the Amphithéâtre de morphologie, École des beaux-arts, Paris, Artist and director Hikaru Fujii introduces Les nucléaires et les choses , an ongoing project that unfolds in KADIST in May 2019, taking the Futaba Town Museum of History and Folklore as a starting point and grounds for speculation after the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear accident...
© » KADIST
Minouk Lim
2012The Possibility of the Half by Minouk Lim is a two-channel video projection that begins with a mirror image of a weeping woman kneeling on the ground...
© » KADIST
Claudia Joskowicz
2007The primary interest in the trilogy is Joskowicz’s use of cinematic space, with long tracking shots that portray resistance to habitual viewing experiences of film and television...