People For Earth

Exhibition 〈DMZ, the One, Immaculate Land〉

2024.10.11. - 2024.11.01. / Art Center White Block

Participating Artists: Gu Ja-min, Park Jieun, Baek Jieun, Shin Chaelong, Cho Eun-seong
Opening Performance: Earth-Eye

Host: Paju City
Organizer: People for Earth

This exhibition explores the process of how the DMZ, the world's only military buffer zone, paradoxically became a 'Garden of Circulation' through the restoration and regeneration of the natural ecosystem. The exhibition begins by asking whether human time, shaped by war and division, can coexist with the cyclical time of nature, which regenerates itself in the absence of humans.

〈Preface〉

We humans emerged from the universe that was created 13.8 billion years ago...
From the Earth, born with an almost impossible probability...
We are the result of 3.8 billion years of life's evolution. We have gone through a 3.8 billion-year evolutionary process as beings intimately connected to all living and non-living things on Earth.
However, humans have constantly waged wars to privatize all the materials that exist on Earth. The DMZ exists on the Korean Peninsula. The scars of a war that still hasn't ended traverse between the South and the North.
The DMZ has the highest density of landmines on Earth, but above it, a diverse range of species has created a self-sustaining ecological garden.
It's as if it's comforting the tragic history of fratricidal conflict.

The temporality of the DMZ, a space where human footsteps have stopped for over 70 years, a unique phenomenon in human history, offers us countless thoughts.
Going against the flow of human history, where our hearts have lost their way... We listen to the time of nature, which has been self-sustaining.
Perhaps only through that time can the South and the North experience a time of crossing over each other.
Nature invades each other but restrains itself and listens to each other's voices.

Through this exhibition 〈DMZ, the One and Only, Perfect World〉.
We listen to what the DMZ has to say.
We embrace the hope of coexistence within the cycle of life.
From private ownership to a time of contemplation.

〈Curator's Statement〉

The 'DMZ, Demilitarized Zone' is the world's only military buffer zone, and as a result, it is also the world's only ecological garden created by nature itself. It is a place where human time, marked by war and division, paradoxically 'coexists' with the time of nature, of self-regeneration and restoration.

This exhibition began with the question of whether such 'coexistence' is still possible. Through human time, division, the 'axis of traversal,' was created, and the DMZ, which serves as a buffer zone abandoned by people, has achieved self-regeneration and restoration through 'time of crossing.' And this place has become a 'Garden of Circulation,' the most ultimate form that no one expected.

Is coexistence possible?
'DMZ, the One and Only, Perfect World' is a common question of five artists who look at this space, and it can be said that it is their own perspective on this question. Through this exhibition, we hope for another serious expansion of how we feel and perceive the reality of division and the space called the DMZ created by it.

〈Exhibition Space〉

- Axis of Traversal
- Time of Crossing
- Garden of Circulation

The 'DMZ, Demilitarized Zone' is the world's only military buffer zone, and as a result, it is also the world's only ecological garden created by nature itself. It is a place where human time, marked by war and division, paradoxically 'coexists' with the time of nature, of self-regeneration and restoration. This exhibition began with the question of whether such 'coexistence' is still possible.

Through human time, division, the 'axis of traversal,' was created, and the DMZ, which serves as a buffer zone abandoned by people, has achieved self-regeneration and restoration through 'time of crossing.' And this place has become a 'Garden of Circulation,' the most ultimate form that no one expected.

* This exhibition is a planned exhibition selected for the Paju City Inter-Korean Exchange and Cooperation Fund competition and was created through collaboration between Earth and People and artists participating in the 2024 Artist Dispatch Support Project.
* Through the 2024 Artist Dispatch Support Project (Korea Arts and Welfare Foundation), we were able to conduct research activities for this exhibition.

〈Opening Reception〉