Kyungah Ham
Kyungah Ham: What you see is the unseen / Chandeliers for Five Cities BC 02-05, 2015 / 2016
North Korean hand embroidery, silk threads on cotton, middleman, anxiety, censorship, ideology, wooden frame, approx. 2000 hrs / 4 persons, 265.5 x 357 cm
Courtesy Carlier Gebauer, Berlin
Kyungah Ham: Needling Whisper, Needle Country / SMS Series in Camouflage / Are you lonely, too? C 01-01-04, 2014 / 2015
North Korean hand embroidery, silk threads on cotton, middleman, anxiety, censorship, wooden frame, approx. 1000 hrs / 1 person, 146 x 146 cm
Courtesy Mikael Stahl
Are you lonely, too?, 2014
The border between South and North Korea is impassable. In addition, there is a ban on communication between the two parts of the country. Kyungah Ham does not want to resign herself to this situation. She treats her art as a “contact zone”. Ham has large-format fabric paintings made in North Korea – in factories that produce for export. Her pictorial designs are peppered with covert messages directed at North Korean workers. Some of these messages attract the attention of the censors and are eliminated. As a result, Ham’s designs change. The artworks that eventually return are the result of a bizarre collaboration – between the South Korean artist, the North Korean censors, and the stickers at the factory.