The “Real” DMZ
DMZ from the north, 2005. Credit: David Eerdmans. A reproduction of an 1894 map hangs in my bedroom, depicting the seahorse-shaped sweep of land known simply as Korea. On it, there is no bold red line cleaving the peninsula in two. My maternal grandparents remember living in this whole country, but at 89 and 91 years old they belong to a dwindling population of those who can recall “before”—a time that, for the rest of us, may as well now be lore.
“The Real DMZ: Artistic Encounters Through Korea’s Demilitarized Zone” is a vivid correspondence; an imagined dialogue, pried open by eight South Korean artists, as a way to engage with an otherwise inaccessible place. Nuance in this conversation arrives in unexpected ways.
Through the ongoing embroidery project “Needling Whisper, Needle Country / SMS Series in Camouflage,” Kyungah Ham has initiated an otherwise impossible collaboration. On display are four four-foot-square canvases from her series, each a kind of rainbowed, psychedelic handmade textile concealing phrases from pop culture. Her method is a complicated process, smuggling patterns through China to
