Box

Cho Duckhyun is an artist who incorporates drawings enlarged from old portrait pictures within black box-like structures, and reveals unknown aspects of modern and contemporary Korean history as if opening old trunks. One of the two photographs used in this work is a picture of a young Japanese girl who died mad after losing her lover at war and is based on a story the artist heard from an immigrant of Japanese descent whom he met in Brazil. The other is a photograph of a Korean youth, who was conscripted as a Japanese soldier under Japan's colonization of Korea and executed as a war criminal once the War ended. In a space like a dusty storeroom, illumination starts to slowly light up the inside and then begins to fade out again slowly, upon which the figures of the viewers are mirrored in the glass placed at the back. We, living in this present day, are the ones who face such anonymous victims of war and colonization. (KR)