An exhibition of the two important Minjung artists LEE Sangho and JEON Jeongho from Gwangju will now open in the Meinblau Art Space on June 14, 2024. Minjung (Korean literally for "mass of the people") is the name for a politically and culturally motivated popular movement in South Korea that emerged at the end of the 1970s, from which Minjung Art emerged as an independent, revolutionary art movement.
Image gallery
MINJUNG Art is Resistance
LEE Sanghoo 2004
The Minjung artists, who were often organized in groups, participated intensively in the pro-democracy uprisings against the ruling military dictatorship and the imposed martial law, as well as the so-called "Gwangju Uprising" in the South Korean city in May 1980.
The demonstration on 18 May, which was originally peaceful, was ended by the military with the most brutal violence. The subsequent uprising of the civilian population, in which up to 200,000 people took part on various days, was answered by the military with a massacre that went down in history.
In South Korea at the time, the military governments generally promoted a politically non-committal, preferably non-objective art based on the Western model. The Minjung artists, on the other hand, developed a narrative and figurative visual language with clear political statements and often distanced themselves from the cultural influences of the Western, explicitly American consumer world in ironized depictions.
Minjung art was always a radical and oppositional folk art movement, which fell victim to state repression for over a decade after its emergence and only gained official recognition in democratic Korea.
Minjung artists LEE Sangho and JEON Jeongho were active against the military dictatorship in the 1980s. In 1987, they were the first artists in South Korea to be arrested and separated for violating the National Security Law due to the production and presentation of their politically motivated banner painting "A New Day Dawns at the Foot of Paektusan". After their release, both continued to work independently as Minjung artists and human rights activists.
In the Meinblau project space, their work will be reunited for the first time far from home. In view of the increasing global threat to liberal democracies from right-wing populists, the culturalhistorical presentation of the two prominent Korean resistance fighters creates a clear link to current political discourse and the fundamental right to freedom.
Additional information
Opening: Friday, June 14, 2024, 7:00 pm
Opening hours: Thu-Sun, 2 to 7 pm
