UTOPIA?!PEACE

For this project he was inspired by the South Korean artist and curator Jooman Cha. Cha has participated in numerous exhibitions on partition, peace and reunification in the Korean peninsula where North and South face each other as a planner, director and artist. Jooman Cha has been leading the DMZ Festival for ten years and is the head of the artist group "Artist Opening Door to Peace and Reunification".

Both act as both curators and artists for UTOPIA?!PEACE. Krauke and his team (Jens Arndt / co-curator, freybeuter Manufaktur / Björn Gripinski / exhibition design and Sunkyoung Jung / project coordination) are responsible for the design and implementation of the exhibition in Berlin.

Nothing has shaped Germany as much in the last three decades as the fall of the Berlin Wall. The peaceful revolution stands as a positive example of common will and the reunification of a people who were politically divided after the Second World War. While German reunification was achieved after only 40 years, North and South Korea are still in a kind of "Cold War status" even after 78 years, even though a ceasefire was agreed 70 years ago. This division is symbolized by the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which scars 150 miles across the peninsula.

In view of this existing division of Korea and taking into account the traces of the earlier division of Germany as well as the effects of a reunification as a result of the global political upheavals of the 1990s, the 18 Korean and international artists of UTOPIA?!PEACE enable very personal and poetic insights into their feelings and experiences. In doing so, they establish a connection to the current and fundamental effects of these developments on people in Europe and around the world.

CURATORS

Frédéric Krauke (Germany), Jooman Cha (Korea)