Discussion: TUE. May 29, 6 – 7pm Reception: 7 – 8pm
OZANEAUX ArtSpace: 515 West 20th Street #4E, NYC at 10 th Ave.

“Talking About The Korean Detente” is an informative panel discussion about the easing of tensions on the Korean Peninsula. The talk will be held by panelists Daniel Kim (activist/filmmaker), Juyeon Rhee (activist), and JT Takagi (filmmaker). While recounting their work and experiences of advocating peace on the Korean peninsula, the speakers will share their thoughts about the current peace talks with North Korea. The panel will help the public understand the profound impact of a peaceful Korea on the advancement of global culture, economy, and security, increasing the awareness in the United States about the benefits of supporting the current endeavor of Koreans to finally end the Korean War, which has been going on since 1950. The discussion will include excerpts from Takagi’s films about North Korea and will be followed by a reception featuring music performed by flutist Robert Dick and Chinese guitarist Lorin Chow Roser.

This panel is a complementary program of the Korean Art Forum’s newest exhibition, We The People. Inspired by the successful candlelight vigils that took place in South Korea at the end of 2016, the exhibition features unique, rarely and never-before seen works of art from North Korea, South Korea, and America. It offers access points to diverse perspectives of contemporary art, in which radically different artworks co-exist, compensating one another, depicting a fuller reality, and actualizing world harmony. The exhibition affirms an alternative model of transforming conflict between the U.S. and North Korea and is a call to the international community to support inter-Korean and North Korean-American art exchanges because art is a bridge to progress.

The Exhibition brings together artworks that have rarely or never before been seen in New York, featuring works by Ki Chol Kim, Kyungbo Han, Sung Gwang Hong, and Youngjun Hwang (North Korea); Jihoe Koo, Suh Yongsun (South Korea); Emmanuel Faure (France); Nina Kuo, Gregory Sholette, and Hank Willis Thomas (United States), among others. Though diverse in theme, motif, medium, scale, and genre, the artworks in this exhibition all bring to light a unique sense of meaning to the phrase “we the people”. Some works in this exhibition represent images of protests while others represent individuals that make up people.

A poignant, self-evident relationship, between state and people, that immediately confronts us today is the talk of a ‘preventive strike’ on North Korea by high level U.S. politicians—the ramifications of which could lead to insurmountable global disaster. To whose benefit does “locked and loaded” and “fire and fury” truly serve? The exhibition intends to remind us that it is ‘us,’ “we the people”, the individuals, who suffer the consequences of choices made by state agencies. As citizens of the globe we are called on to recognize that real and lasting change comes from the creation of new possibilities. Artists and creative thinkers bring much to the table in helping to solidify and confront collective ideas of surmounting xenophobic fears, and with such focus and dialogue, bring forth new possibilities for a better way.