The traveling exhibition "Haunted Koreas: Dreaming Unification Protest Peace" showcases Mina Cheon's development of her most recent POLIPOP Art. Between 2019-2025, Cheon's series of new works have been exhibited at the Ethan Cohen Gallery, the Inaugural Asia Society Triennale, The Korea Society in New York, American University Museum, and Asian Arts & Cultural Center at Towson University. Each exhibition is newly curated and includes different and new works, it is an accumulative ongoing exhibition project.

ASIAN ARTS & CULTURAL CENTER TOWSON UNIVERSITY MARYLAND

HAUNTED KOREAS
Dreaming Unification Protest Peace
Mina Cheon with Kim Il Soon

February 12 – May 17 (closed March 17 – 22)
Monday – Saturday, 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Asian Arts Gallery, TU Center for the Arts
1 Fine Arts Drive, Towson, MD 21204
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 22, 5:30 – 6:30 p.m.

View the most extensive collection of global activist artist Mina Cheon’s series of “Unification Dream” paintings, a new perspective on the flags of a unified Korea. Each of these paintings, born from the artist’s stream of unconsciousness, is a powerful peace protest, shedding light on the intricacies of communication, love, and a shared vision of a harmonious future for North and South Korea. The call for unification within the Koreas is a concerted effort to desire peace on earth, because to dream for global peace is about healing and reconciliation of tempered worlds divided. 

In her dream state, Cheon, along with her North Korean counterpart and art persona, Kim Il Soon, transcends physical borders and cultural boundaries. They enter a realm of imagination where dreaming is a powerful catalyst for envisioning a peaceful world. Her aspiration for peace in the Korean peninsula amidst escalated global warfare is to examine the complexities of ideological, political, economic, and religious divisions witnessed in everyday lives and to offer this call for global harmony that inspires us all as a form of cultural protest. 

Artists Mina Cheon and/with Kim Il Soon are the creators of the provocative political pop art known as POLIPOP. This art form is not just visually accessible, but also inclusive by its invitation of the subject matter leaning towards peace for all. With its eye-catching, colorful “pop art” work, the art is layered by cultural comparative studies and inquiries into current global geopolitics. Wars are lucrative, and peace is an expensive endeavor. Using the rhetoric of pop art, the political statement is about unity and peace on earth, inviting everyone to be part of the conversation.

This exhibition is in part an extended version of Mina Cheon’s “Haunted Koreas,” which was her 2022 solo show at the American University Museum in Washington DC, with select pieces coming from the Inaugural 2020-2021 Asia Society Triennale and Cheon’s 2021 solo exhibition at the Korea Society, New York respectively.

OPENING RECEPTION + ARTIST TALK

Mina Cheon "HAUNTED KOREAS"

Saturday, February 22, 5:30 – 6:30 p.m.
Asian Arts Gallery & Atrium, TU Center for the Arts
1 Fine Arts Drive, Towson, MD 21204

Join Mina Cheon to explore the HAUNTED KOREAS: Dreaming Unification Protest Peace exhibition together and gain insights into how she creates art to advocate for positive change. Mina Cheon (PhD, MFA) is a global Korean new media artist, scholar, and educator who divides her time between Baltimore, New York, and Seoul, Korea. Born in Seoul to parents who were originally from the North, Cheon has never known a unified Korea. She has worked on North Korean awareness and global peace projects since 2004 and her specific focus on East Asia reflects the transgenerational trauma of Korea’s history, particularly division, war, and Japanese colonization. Co-sponsored by the Korean American Foundation – Greater Washington and the Baltimore Changwon Sister City Committee.

PERFORMANCE

Intersegmental 38 with the Baltimore Composers Forum

Saturday, February 22, 6:30 p.m.
Recital Hall, TU Center for the Arts
1 Fine Arts Drive, Towson, MD 21204

How do we cross over the border with music? How do we prompt unity? How do we compose global peace? This concert of works by diverse members of the Baltimore Composers Forum draws inspiration from Mina Cheon’s series of “Unification Dream” paintings. Pieces explore the idea of crossing over the 38th parallel which runs through and connects both Maryland and Korea (DMZ). Featured composers include Jin-Hwa Choi, Se-Yeon Oh, Anna Rubin, Ha-Eun Lee, Young-Wook Lee, Keith Kramer, Garth Baxter, Janice Macaulay, Gavin Brown, Ljiljana Becker, Ian Rashkin, and Ariyo Shahry. Featured performers include Ji Eun Kim (soprano), Soyeun Jung (gayageum), Youngik Jang (guitar), and Bonghee Lee (piano). 

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY MUSEUM

Haunted Koreas Mina Cheon with Kim Il Soon

Presented by the Alper Initiative for Washington Art
September 10–December 11, 2022

South Korean new media artist Mina Cheon works for Korean unification with her North Korean alter ego counterpart, Kim Il Soon, through “asynchronous communication.” Crossing borders by sending and receiving art between North and South Korea, the artist brings the remnants of her global activism by sharing the recent works from the Inaugural Asia Society Triennial and The Korea Society in New York, respectively, between 2020 and 2021, as a comprehensive solo show for the Alper Initiative for Washington Art at the American University Museum in Washington, DC. The guiding exhibition text, “The History of a Paradoxical Incorporation,” by critical theorist Avital Ronell contextualizes the haunted Koreas and the artists' protest for peace.

“Cheon breaks into forbidden territory, a no man’s land—certainly a no-woman’s land—of contested sovereignty. She slips into No. Korean territory, and recedes back to So. Korean haunts in camouflage, be it as a secretive convoy of art historical teaching or in roguish disguise, as one of “them.” Thus her deliberate misappropriations of propagandistic iconography sometimes simulate adherence to an opponent’s claims, switching up cues of politically coded assumptions and the righteous bullet points of human rights advocacy. The work attracts a riot of controversy that secretly targets the heart of a dilemma, an ambivalence shared by many who cannot choose sides, yet must choose sides, living in the tensional structure of division, asymmetrically apportioned.”

— Avital Ronell

The exhibition was made possible with the 2021 AHL – Andrew & Barbara Choi Family Foundation Grant Award. With great thanks to the Ethan Cohen Gallery, Waterfall Mansion and Gallery, The Korea Society, and Asia Society Museum of New York for supporting the artist in the works displayed in the exhibition. And a special thank you to the courageous North Korean defectors around the world and in South Korea.

Artist & Philosopher Bios

Mina Cheon (천민정) (b. 1973, Seoul, South Korea; lives and works in Baltimore, New York, and Seoul)

Mina Cheon is a new media artist, scholar, educator, and activist best known for her “Polipop” paintings inspired by pop art and social realism. Cheon’s practice draws inspiration from the partition of the Korean Peninsula, exemplified by her parallel body of work created under her North Korean alter ego, Kim Il Soon, in which she enlists a range of mediums, including painting, sculpture, video, installation, and performance to deconstruct and reconcile the precarious history — and ongoing coexistence — between North and South Korea. She has exhibited internationally, including at the Inaugural Asia Society Triennial (2020-2021); Busan Biennale (2018); Baltimore Museum of Art (2018); American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, DC (2014); Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul (2012); and Insa Art Space, Seoul (2005). Her work is in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton; and Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul. Mina Cheon’s solo exhibitions include those at the Ethan Cohen Gallery (2014, 2017-18, 2020-2021), the Lance Fung Gallery (2002), and The Korea Society (2021) in New York; the Noyes Museum of Art of Stockton University in New Jersey (2018); the Trunk Gallery (2014), Sungkok Art Museum (2012), and Insa Art Space (2004-5) in Seoul, Korea; and the Maryland Art Place (2012) and C. Grimaldis Gallery (2008) in Baltimore. Currently an Associate Dean, Undergraduate Studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Cheon has been a full-time professor at MICA since 2004. Under the guidance of dissertation advisor Avital Ronell, she received her PhD in Philosophy of Media and Communications from the European Graduate School, European University for Interdisciplinary Studies, Switzerland, and adapted her dissertation into a book, Shamanism + Cyberspace (Dresden and New York: Atropos Press,  2009). She also received her MFA in Imaging Digital Arts from UMBC: An Honors University in Maryland; an MFA from the Hoffberger School of Painting, MICA; and a BFA in painting from Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea.

A recipient of numerous prizes, Avital Ronell is University Professor of the Humanities at New York University, and teaches philosophy and media at the European Graduate School in Switzerland. She has delivered lecture performances at the Centre Pompidou and the Théâtre de l'Odéon in Paris, and at Hau3 in Berlin. Recent works include Complaint: Grievance among Friends (University of Illinois Press, 2018) and Burnout der Autorität (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, translator Peter Trawny, 2020), "An Addictionary of Violence" (Counterpunch), “The Gestell from Hell” (The Oxford Literary Review), “The Next Level: Erasures and Rollbacks” (Modern Language Notes), and the "Survival Kit for the Anguished" podcast series from Philomonaco’s “Rencontres philosophiques.”

MINA CHEON @ THE ASIA SOCIETY IN NEW YORK, THE INAUGURAL ASIA SOCIETY TRIENNALE

Underlying the Triennial is our belief in the power of art: its innate ability to embrace the paradoxes and contradictions of our increasingly complex global society while retaining the capacity to illuminate the thread of our shared humanity.

The presence of art shows that we are never alone in life and our dreams. We invite you to dream with us.

Boon Hui Tan
Founding Artistic Director and Cocurator, Asia Society Triennial

THE KOREA SOCIETY IN NEW YORK

Mina Cheon: Dreaming Unification/Protest Peace

May 3 - September 2, 2021

The global art activist Mina Cheon draws inspiration from the partition of the Korean peninsula, exemplified by her parallel body of work created under her North Korean alter ego, Kim Il Soon, in which she enlists a range of mediums including painting, sculpture, video, installation, and performance to deconstruct and reconcile the fraught history and ongoing coexistence between North and South Korea. Her solo exhibition at The Korea Society, presented during the height of #stopasianhate movement and continuing tensions on Korean peninsula, showcases her most recent painting series of Unification Flags.

Tapping into her stream of unconsciousness to promote a future of unity and peace, Mina Cheon's paintings of the Korean peninsula recalls past interKorean efforts including the Olympics, athletic teamwork, Arirang Mass Games, and other public events that celebrated “One Korea.” Submerged in the custom-made IKB (Yves Klein blue) paint and incorporating the cosmopolitan expression of protest art style using stencil and spray, each Unification Flag painting is a symbolic new figuration, a body that parades in a procession for peace.

Ethan Cohen Gallery
251 West 19th Street, New York, NY 
Exhibition Dates: December 10, 2020 – January 30, 2021

“Dreaming unification is protesting peace as the new global condition.”
 
Ethan Cohen Gallery is honored to present Mina Cheon aka Kim Il Soon’s solo exhibition “Dreaming Unification : Protest Peace.” As we face our challenging times with the coronavirus pandemic and a stressful post-election, our countries remain divided. Today’s resounding words from the US President-elect Joe Biden are “not to divide, but to unify.” And, we do this with our social consciousness intact, with social justice and anti-racism efforts in the forefront, while dreaming unification and protesting for peace.
 
Art for Life, Masks On!
 
From the divided Koreas to the divided United States of America, desiring peace “over-there” echoes desiring peace “over-here.” Living in pandemic times, art must continue as a banner of hope and as an essential in life.
 
In her dream world, artist Mina Cheon's North Korean art persona, aka "Kim Il Soon," paints the Korean national third flag, the Unification Flag, in a new body of work of flag figurations, Dreaming Unification : Protest Peace painting series. Tapping into her stream of unconsciousness to promote a future of unity and peace, flags are raised in this exhibition to recall past interKorean efforts including the Olympics, athletic teamwork, Arirang Mass Games, and other public events that celebrated “One Korea.” This is done as a protest for peace in contrast to the discouraging chaos and canceled peace talks in the Peninsula. New spectacles arise with ongoing threats from North Korea with the blowing up of InterKorean Liaison Office building at Kaesong on June 16th and the 75th Anniversary Worker’s Party military celebration on October 10th parading new ICBMs just this year 2020.
 
From a series of 20 pieces completed in 2019, shared in 2020, submerged in the custom-made New IKB (Yves Klein Blue) paint, using stencil, spray, sumi ink on canvas, each flag painting is a symbolic new figuration, a body that parades in a procession for peace. At the gallery, these Unification Flags pose as figures floating in space and centering the 10 x 5 feet symphonic triptych, where East meets West in the stormy “Dreaming Unification: Protest Peace (Triptych Flag Figuration East Meets West, Joseonhwa Protest Art).”
 
For the past decade, Kim Il Soon has been painting in the socialist realism propaganda style, hot pink drip abstract expressionism, and in New IKB dip conceptual paintings (with custom-paint inspired by Yves Klein’s International Klein Blue). As she masters Western art styles and dreams for liberation within the canvas as well as from the North Korean regime, the new series as “protesting peace” is done with stencils and spray paint and sumi ink, hitting the cord of North Korean most revered painting style, Joseonhwa (sumi ink, rice paper hanji, traditional oriental painting technique applied to North Korean propaganda contents) and the cosmopolitan expression of protest art style using stencil, spray, tagging.

Another exclusive viewing in the exhibition is from Cheon’s personal art collection, a 2019 painting by an anonymous North Korean painter. In the hands of the artist, Cheon took the liberty to extend the subtitle, “North-South Declaration of Partnership: Standing before the Unification Flag” based on the visuals and literature that writes, “We, people(s) must stand in our confirmed stance with respect and sincerity towards declaring partnership.” This painting represents the ongoing asynchronic communication between the artist and the North Koreans and that dreaming unification is from both sides of the Koreas.

Since 2017, with the support of North Korean defector communities in South Korea, Cheon’s “Video Art History Lessons by Professor Kim” have gone into North Korea in media drives, possibly being the very first contemporary video art screened in North Korean homes. The videos in notel players will be showcased in Cheon’s participation at the inaugural Asia Society Triennial “We Do Not Dream Alone” October 27, 2020 – June 27, 2021, with her art installation in the part two opening March 16, 2021. The videos were first exhibited at the Ethan Cohen Gallery in 2017-2018 and after at the Busan Bienniale 2018 in South Korea, along with Cheon’s most culturally recognized “peace offering,” Eat Chocopie Together, a 100,000 Chocopies installation for the audience to eat for the sake of art and healing. Cheon aka Kim has dedicated her art to North Korean defectors around the world.
 
While the North Korean hermit kingdom announces its presence by blowing up the Liaison Office at Kaesong and continues to strong-arm nuclear arsenals, we know this much, there are citizens who desire communication with the outside world and risk their lives for basic human rights such as access to information and foreign media. Artist Mina Cheon’s exhibition responds to all Koreans, and highlights the demand for peace in a form of a “protest” in oppositional language to a “rally.” Please join in the efforts and view her new body of work that is about global dreaming for unification and protesting peace for surviving the chaos and strain of our daily lives.