Artists introduction

Lee Boo-rok (b. 1971) is an artist based in Seoul, South Korean. He studied Oriental Painting at Seoul National University. Boo-rok’s work explores language and symbol, avatar and ego, and relational identities within society through the medium of social media, installation, video and publications. As well as exhibiting domestically and internationally, his work is part of permanent collections at Seoul Museum of Art, Gwangju Museum of Art and Art Bank of National Museum of Contemporary Art.

Im Heung Soon (b.1969) is an artist and filmmaker based in Seoul and Jeju Island. His work explores the lives of people who are marginalized in social, political, capitalist and national contexts through different visual mediums such as photography, installations and cinema. He has also directed several feature films such as Factory Complex (2014/2015), Reborn (2017) and Things that Do Us Part (2018). Recently, his works have been exhibited at Sharjah Biennale (2015), MoMA PS1, The National Art Center Tokyo, Tate Modern, Lincoln Center and Pompidou Centre among others. In 2015 his work Factory Complex was awarded the Silver Lion at the 56th Venice Biennale.

Yoo soo studied photography at university and went on to work as a photo journalist at Minjog21 before becoming an artist. He organized and participated in the exhibition “Pyeongyang people visit to Seoul” at Press Center in Seoul and Democracy park in Busan in May 2006. Recently he has also organized “Special Exhibition in Pyeongchang on the South-North Korean Joint Excavation of the Manwoldae Palace at Gaeseong” and participated in “Gaeseong Industrial Complex” at Culture Station Seoul 284.

In Lee Boo-rok’s replica of a garment factory, Robo Cafe, rows of tables with sewing machines fill the space, covered in tablecloths on which slogans about productivity are being sewn. Im Heung-soon’s video work Brothers Peak portrays the artist climbing up a mountain while carrying a coffin, accompanied by the resonant singing of the Seoul-based gay chorus G-Voice and Lee Hyang, an accordion player who is a North Korean defector. In his installation, Yoo Soo shows actual gifts exchanged between North and South workers, asking us to reflect on the fundamental meaning of the Kaesong Industrial Complex by exaimining the gifted items.

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