Banned Images
Control and Censorship in East Asian Democracies
Art from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan: In the international view, there is only limited recognition of the fact that none of these three countries has a democracy in the Western European sense or view freedom of expression as an inalienable right. In Japan, the reasons lie in the aftermath of Cold War and the failure to come to terms with the imperial past, in South Korea and Taiwan in ideological adversarial stance towards North Korea with the People’s Republic of China.
The exhibition Verbotene Bilder [Banned Images] presented works whose aesthetic ambiguities relativize the artistic and art-historic perception for Western eyes, which have adopted over-simplified polarizations. It invited two artists from each of the three countries, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. The chosen artists all have a critical stance on the politics and taboos of their respective countries, are concerned for freedom of expression, human rights and coming to terms with the sensitive issues of the past, and do not shy away from the social and political conclusions inherent in their work.
The catalog brings together text contributions by Arai Hiroyuki, Rebecca Jennison, Kim Jong-gil, Suh Sung & Vladimir Tikhonov and numerous illustrations of the exhibited works by Chieh-jen CHEN, Ching-Yao CHEN, Sung-dam HONG, Katsuhisa NAKAGAKI, Sunmu, Taeko TOMIYAMA, among others.
Ed.: nGbK
Work group: Kiwan Choi, Nataly Jung-Hwa Han, Youlee Ku, Tsukasa Yajima, Jae-Hyun Yoo
With contributions by: Arai Hiroyuki, Rebecca Jennison, Kim Jong-gil, Suh Sung und Vladimir Tikhonov