Kim Guang Nan
The Future is Bright

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic People’s Repub­lic of Korea (DPRK) holds deeply to its nation­al name. In the West, it is invari­ably North Korea. What most peo­ple know of its art is a hero­ic and home-grown rework­ing of Social­ist Real­ism, the peas­ant and indus­tri­al pro­le­tari­at in action for the col­lec­tive good. Not a sker­rick of para­noia as the end­less advance of ide­o­log­i­cal tri­umphal­ism march­es on. Pro­pa­gan­da posters and oth­er media such as sculp­ture and por­traits hold the same line – con­fi­dent, warmth in home­land col­lec­tivism, resis­tant to oth­er thought and aggres­sive in defence of those who con­demn it. But with­in this last bas­tion phe­nom­e­non is a com­plex and sub­tly vary­ing syntax.

What are we to make of an artist whose work is born out of his imag­i­na­tion, where no appar­ent role exists oth­er than the artist’s self-expres­sion and ful­ly realised in this exhi­bi­tion? The role for artists is pre-deter­mined but with­in this reg­u­lat­ed and super­vised envi­ron­ment cameos of per­son­al expres­sion appear.

Kim Guang Nan was born in 1953, a few months after the July armistice of the North and South Kore­an War and trained at Pyongyang Cen­tral Art Acad­e­my, and hav­ing qual­i­fied, worked at the Man­su­dae Art Stu­dio. Estab­lished by Pres­i­dent Kim Il Sung, it remains the major state-run organ­i­sa­tion for artists in North Korea. A phys­i­cal­ly vast enter­prise, artists work across styles and medi­ums – painters in oil and ink, print­mak­ers, craft work­ers, design­ers, sculp­tors, ceram­i­cists and mosa­ic artists – hand­i­craft and embroi­dery is the main activ­i­ty for women. Pro­pa­gan­da work is ubiq­ui­tous from stu­dio work to pub­lic art. Any form of abstrac­tion does not exist and is regard­ed as bour­geois and anti-revolutionary.

Nicholas Bon­ner lives in Bei­jing and has become some­thing of a cul­tur­al impre­sario for North Kore­an artists. As a reg­u­lar vis­i­tor to Man­su­dae since 1993, he works close­ly with its artists. He has giv­en them a voice out­side North Korea where, if cir­cum­stances were left to lum­ber along, art would remain con­strained, pre­dictable, and ide­o­log­i­cal­ly sin­gle-mind­ed. The ide­o­log­i­cal imper­a­tive for mak­ing art tends to over­ride oth­er per­son­al inter­ests and ideas for new projects not being reject­ed out of hand is a fick­le arrange­ment. Nicholas coor­di­nat­ed North Korea’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Asia Pacif­ic Tri­en­ni­al, 2009, at Queens­land Art Gallery QAGO­MA. The Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment can­celled the artists’ visas at the eleventh hour. He com­mis­sioned work for the archi­tec­ture sec­tion of the 2014 Venice Bien­nale which award­ed the Gold­en Lion to (South) Korea, but includ­ed a sec­tion from DPRK. ​‘Com­rade Kim Goes Fly­ing’ was released in 2012, a joint British-Bel­gian-North Kore­an roman­tic com­e­dy fea­ture film and joint­ly direct­ed by Nicholas Bonner.

It is a nec­es­sary real­i­ty that he speaks for the artists he works with. In the case of ​‘The Future is Bright’ and Kim Guang Nan, it is treat­ed seri­ous­ly, and not ​‘look this is what North Korea thinks the future will be like!’ It began as a project explor­ing their upbring­ings, imag­in­ing a future with all the trep­i­da­tion and excite­ment that was involved. ​‘We both clear­ly remem­ber the graph­ics we were shown as kids and how we used this infor­ma­tion to devel­op our imag­i­na­tion. There was so lit­tle else avail­able so those com­ic images of rock­ets and alien life forms were not only mas­sive­ly appeal­ing in their own right, but pro­vid­ed a stim­u­lus to send us on our own imag­i­na­tive journeys.’

Nicholas had a North Kore­an sto­ry­book with an illus­trat­ed front cov­er and Kim ​‘had read the book and found it fun and remind­ed him of his youth … we would then sit down and dis­cuss the piece in the terms of how it worked visu­al­ly … colour schemes, keep­ing it sim­ple and com­ic like. Both of us recog­nise our child­hood in all of the images … the imag­i­na­tion of a child. … and now as grown men still the feel­ing of explo­ration and dan­ger.’ The phys­i­cal per­son­al­i­ty of the linocuts was impor­tant to con­vey a feel­ing which is unmis­tak­ably pre-dig­i­tal which includes delib­er­ate glitch­es in reg­is­tra­tion. The high gloss paper was sourced in Chi­na, the lino blocks in Pyongyang and the heavy, sticky ink was sourced local­ly too.

Imbed­ded with­in the visu­al nar­ra­tive of ​‘The Future is Bright’ is a reflec­tion of a utopi­an vision of North Korea. It is a social­ism shaped by the influ­ence of Sovi­et ide­al­ism, where sci­ence, explo­ration and the vast­ness of its imag­i­na­tive reach might become part of a pro­le­tar­i­an dream(1). The Amer­i­cans failed with a mis­sile launch in 1957 while the Sovi­ets suc­cess­ful­ly launched ​‘Sput­nik’ in the same year and con­firmed that the Cold War was a polit­i­cal, sci­en­tif­ic, hearts and minds war. In the case of ​‘The Future is Bright’ west­ern audi­ences might read it as an irony about one of the least vis­it­ed places on the plan­et. But in real­i­ty it’s about the imag­i­na­tion of child­hood realised again as an adult, an imag­i­na­tion born out of cir­cum­stances where the indi­vid­ual imag­i­na­tion usu­al­ly remains unseen.

Doug Hall AM

1. For a com­pre­hen­sive account of the Sovi­et influ­ence on North Kore­an art, illus­tra­tion and lit­er­a­ture see Daf­na Zur, ​‘Let’s Go to the Moon: Sci­ence Fic­tion in the North Kore­an Children’s Mag­a­zine Adong Munhak, 1956−1965’, The Jour­nal of Asian Stud­ies, Avail­able on CJO 2014 doi:10.1017/s0021911813002404

Quotes from Nicholas Bon­ner to Doug Hall from an email con­ver­sa­tion, March, 2016.