Media artist Park Chan-kyong has recently opened a solo exhibition in Korea for the first time in 5 years. As a multi-media artist, Park Chan-kyong (who happens to be the younger brother of internationally renowned film director Park Chan-wook) explores a crucial element of Korea: its people and the unspoken effects of rapid socioeconomic progress that bypassed the necessary psychological postwar healing.
This exhibition, named Annyeong Farewell, is an homage to the nameless and underprivileged souls that were sacrificed during Korea’s blind pursuit of economic growth. Citizen’s Forest, the centerpiece of the exhibition, laments the lost lives of tragic events in modern Korean history like the 1894 Donghak Peasant Revolution, the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, the 1980 Gwangju Uprising and also the most recent Sewol Ferry Disaster (2014). It is a three channel panoramic video that was inspired by poet Kim Soo-young’s The Great Root and painter Oh Yoon’s The Lemures. The gloomy exhibition reflecting on the clandestine torment the country had to endure, would be well finished with a moment of silence.