Word: ils
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Their output is seldom sold or shown abroad. But "The World According to Kim Jong Il," an exhibition that will run at Rotterdam's Kunsthal museum until Aug. 29, offers a rare and fascinating look at the captive artists' spin on life in the Hermit Kingdom. The 285 works on display are relatively recent, but they might easily have come from Stalin's Soviet Union or Mao's China. The North Korean art clock seems to have stopped circa 1930-50, and the impression that emerges from the exhibition is of a remote, sad and strangely poignant land...
...artists in North Korea, self-expression is a dangerously foreign notion. Their mission is to toil as salaried functionaries in dictator Kim Jong Il's propaganda machine. They work in studios that turn out government-commissioned works in government-approved styles. The most famous studio is Mansudae in Pyongyang, a huge enterprise employing hundreds of artists, but studios are also maintained by regional and municipal authorities-and even the state railroad company. The artists work regular hours, are expected to produce a stipulated quota of works, and are sometimes enlisted in "speed-war" contests that test their ability to pump...
...show begins with two large paintings, produced expressly for this exhibit, that flank the entryway and set the stage for this strange trip into the time-warped world of North Korea. On the right, spiffy, Mao-suited founding father Kim Il Sung surveys a construction site, surrounded by smiling, hard-hatted laborers; on the left, plump and girlishly handsome son Kim Jong Il stands on the deck of a speedboat, surrounded by marines. Visitors then walk through a series of galleries enclosed within a giant red-walled box set up in the museum's hangar-like exhibit space...
...schools to hospitals, they provide "an image of what the regime is thinking about," says De Ceuster, "and what policies are being presented to the people as priorities." Graphically, they feature lots of upraised fists, upthrust rifles with bayonets, and shouting leaders rallying the people. A poster celebrating Kim Il Sung's dogma of juche (self reliance or autonomy) depicts a soldier, a worker, a farmer and an intellectual holding the staff of a red banner with the word "Autonomy" written on it in yellow. The poster commands: "Let Us Firmly Maintain the Banner of Independence in Revolution and Construction...
Since the beheading of Korean interpreter Kim Sun Il in Iraq last week, Koreans have been struggling to comprehend the brutal act?and wondering whom to blame. Some of the thousands attending nightly candlelight vigils have pointed fingers at the United States; others denounced South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun; a few directed their anger at South Korea's small Muslim community, with one man even barging into a mosque in Seoul wielding a knife...