Block title

Description

Korean-American new media artist Mina Cheon’s signature art piece for “Korean unification” Eat Choco·Pie Together is featured at the 2018 Busan Biennale that focuses on the theme of divided territories “Divided We Stand” curated by a dynamic international curator and critic team Cristina Ricupero and Jorg Heiser. Kindly donated by the Orion Co., 100,000 Choco·Pies will be installed on the floor of Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) Busan for the audience to eat during the entire exhibition duration. The piece calls all North Korean defectors in South Korea to come "Eat Choco·Pie Together." "Eat Choco·Pie Together" Korean-American new media artist Mina Cheon’s signature art piece for “Korean unification” Eat Choco·Pie Together is featured at the 2018 Busan Biennale that focuses on the theme of divided territories “Divided We Stand” curated by a dynamic international curator and critic team Cristina Ricupero and Jorg Heiser. Kindly donated by the Orion Co., 100,000 Choco·Pies will be installed on the floor of Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) Busan for the audience to eat during the entire exhibition duration. The piece calls all North Korean defectors in South Korea to come "Eat Choco·Pie Together." (Photo Credit Lee Sang Uk, Courtesy of the Artist and 2018 Busan Biennale) Opening Saturday, September 8, 4 PM Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) Busan The 2018 Busan Biennale (September 8 - November 11), held at the new MoCA Busan and the former Bank of Korea, is expected to be one of the most prominent Asian biennale presentations so far due to the thematic timeliness and conceptual exploration of divided territories that echoes geopolitical and ideological conflicts around the world, and especially hones in on the trauma of North and South Korean division. Known for her North Korean awareness, Korean unification, and global peace projects, Mina Cheon showcases Eat Choco·Pie Together for the first time in Korea, and surrounds it with her other artworks related to the subject of North and South Korean relations – in forms of social realist and abstract dream paintings, as well as video art history lessons that were sent into North Korea by USB drives all throughout 2017-2018. In December 2017, when the 24-year old North Korean solider “Oh” ran across the DMZ and was shot at, he woke up from his surgery in South Korea and said he wanted to eat Choco·Pie. This reflects how the Choco·Pie has become a unique cultural symbol of liberation and freedom to North Koreans, while being an actual cultural object of loving exchange between the two Koreas. As seen in the famous 2000 film JSA (Joint Security Area), the snack instills the Korean cultural psyche for dreaming and desiring Korean unification, friendship and love. Continued as one of the number one smuggled snacks today, one Choco·Pie is known to be worth three bowls of rice in North Korea. Over many years, Choco·Pies have been sent over the DMZ in helium balloons by the thousands from South to North Korea while the snack is distributed all around the world, demanded by the international market. Each Choco·Pie individual wrapper comes with the Chinese character “Jung 情” (love) and a Korean motto “A New Beginning 새로운 시작.” The artist selected it to symbolize the love and friendship between the Koreas and for the peninsula’s new era of peace and cooperation. As an installation, the piece is dedicated to the North Korean defectors in South Korea. This highly interactive audience participation artwork promises to be a big hit and sensation since Choco·Pie is a very much-loved snack, and the sweet taste and chocolate aroma will accentuate the healing aspect of art, very much needed for our divided Korea. The shape of the installation as a large circle references the idea of unity and mimics the shape of the pie itself. Meant for the visitors to freely take and eat on site, the daily consumption of the piece will also organically change the shape of the installation over time. The Choco·Pie sponsorship by Orion Co. highlights the company’s advocacy of global peace, especially for Korea during this remarkable breakthrough period of cultural diplomacy and communication between the North and South Koreas. It is also an exemplary corporate patronage for the arts and culture as the leading catalyst for social change. At the Biennale, Cheon’s art comes from her latest 2017-2018 solo exhibition “UMMA : MASS GAMES – Motherly Love North Korea” at the Ethan Cohen Gallery in New York. Alongside Eat Choco·Pie Together, the exhibition includes paintings of dreaming unification and North Korean imagery of propaganda and mass games, and work inspired by Choco·Pie Happy Land Games, toys that come inside the Choco·Pie boxes. The art supports the fervent effort of foreign goods and media smuggled into North Korea that is predicted to influence an uprise of Pyongyang Spring. The video art pieces, (Umma) Professor Kim Art History Lessons, installed on five monitors near the Choco·Pie installation are those that were exhibited in New York while they were simultaneously sent into North Korea by USB drives along with food and medical aids. Working with the global activism effort of media and information penetration into the hermit kingdom, sending Cheon’s video art was possible with the anonymous support of North Korean defectors who are still in contact with family and friends in North Korea.