KOREAN DREAMS
July 7th – July 29th, 2018
Opening July 7th, 5:30 - 7
Gallery Hours for Korean Dreams:
Fridays and Saturdays 1-5pm
Photographer Nathalie Daoust’s newest project, Korean Dreams, is a complex series that probes the unsettling vacuity of North Korea. Piercing its veil with her lens, these images reveal a country that seems to exist outside of time, as a carefully choreographed mirage. Daoust has spent much of her career exploring the chimeric world of fantasy: the hidden desires and urges that compel people to dream, to dress up, to move beyond the bounds of convention and to escape from reality. With Korean Dreams she is exploring this escapist impulse not as an individual choice, but as a way of life forced upon an entire nation.
Daoust deliberately obscures her photographs during the development stage, as the layers of film are peeled off, the images are stifled until the facts becomes 'lost' in the process and a sense of detachment from reality is revealed. This darkroom method mimics the way information is transferred in North Korea – the photographs, as the North Korea people, are both manipulated until the underlying truth is all but a blur. The resultant pictures speak to North Korean society, of missing information and truth concealed.
- Samantha Small -
"Until I went there, I didn’t understand why, after so many years of oppression, the people of North Korea do not just stand up and fight for their freedom. After being there and doing extensive research on the country, I now understand. Executions and false imprisonment are commonplace. You can spend up to ten years in prison for just wearing jeans, which are forbidden by the state.
As an extra deterrent, there is also a three-generation policy. Even if you are willing to risk your life for the greater good of freeing your country, if you get caught, your children, parents and grandparents also receive the same punishment. This makes change almost impossible." Nathalie Daoust
Schooling
Education is universal and state-funded. According to the CIA North Korea has a 100% literacy rate and students have to complete a three-year, 81-hour course on Kim Jong-un. Note: In the 1990s all teachers were required to pass an accordion test before being able to receive their teaching cervtificate.