Korean artist Park Kyong-ju opens solo exhibition in Germany while having visa issues

Park Kyong-ju poses in front of her work at Gallery RichCake in Germany, Friday. Courtesy of Artist Residency Schloss Balmoral, photo by Tobias Vollmer

Anyone familiar with Park Kyong-ju, an active figure in Korean art activism, can't help but admire her firm dedication to advocating for the rights of foreign artists. Now, she takes a bold new step with her solo exhibition, "I Am Fiction," inspired by her personal struggles with artist visa issues during her residency at Schloss Balmoral in Germany. The exhibition opened on Nov. 16 and runs until Friday in the town of Bad Ems and features live drawing and calligraphy performances, adding a dynamic, interactive dimension to her thought-provoking work.

Her new exhibition features installation art using drawings, objects, documents, performances, neon signs, video and community art created during her time this year in Artist Residency Schloss Balmoral.

The artist intends to draw attention to how immigrants live like ghosts in a foreign land, both present and not existing. She seeks to criticize the reality that while neoliberal capital crosses borders freely, these borders are still closed to the socially disadvantaged, such as women and freelance artists.

"It is my personal experience, so I am embarrassed to reveal it, but I opened my solo exhibition to share and discuss the issues I felt while living in an international residency with a fictitious certificate with the local community," she told The Korea Times. "I came here on an invitation from the Department of Culture of Rheinland-Pfalz, but while I was denied an artist visa and received a fictitious certificate, I even doubted the purpose of my coming here, and even considered packing up and returning home. However, instead of running away, I chose my own way. I chose to express this time of pain through creation, ask the inviting organization to raise issues and improve the system, and communicate proactively with the local community by disclosing the process of the past eight months through a personal exhibition."

Park Kyong-ju poses in front of her work at Gallery RichCake in Germany, Friday. Courtesy of Artist Residency Schloss Balmoral, photo by Tobias Vollmer

She connected her experiences with migrant artists in Korea where she has been fighting for their rights for a long time. “The faces of many members of the Salad Theatre who worked with me in Korea came to mind, and I became grateful to them. I thought about how much courage it takes for a socially disadvantaged person to speak up on stage, and how brave they are. As a voice sculptor, I could be their microphone, but I cannot be them. That is why I expect this unique and uncomfortable experience in Germany, to be a great asset to me," she said.

She cited the case of Tran Thanh Lan, a Vietnamese woman who died in 2008, 26 days after entering Korea.

"In particular, I am spending time understanding with my heart, not my head, the psychological state that Vietnamese immigrant woman Tran Thanh Lan, whom I have studied for 17 years, must have felt when she was forced to divorce six days after entering Korea and was locked up in her home," she said.

Previously, Park's only overseas artist residency was in Tokyo in 2006, and she reported not feeling much inconvenience during the brief, one-month stay.

"This year, when I was in artist residency at Schloss Balmoral in Bad Ems, I experienced how European international residencies discriminate against non-European artists in an unethical manner. Europe seems to have built its borders high even in the field of art,” she said.

A poster for Park Kyong-ju's exhibition, "I am fiction," in Germany / Courtesy of Park Kyong-ju

“In my case, even though I was an artist invited by the Department of Culture of Rheinland-Pfalz, where Bad Ems is located, I was not able to apply for an artist visa because I was receiving a scholarship. It was only after three months had passed since I entered the country that I learned that I was not able to apply for an artist visa. After that, I applied for a special visa given to scholarship recipients and received a fictitious certificate (fiktionsbescheinigung) during the visa application process."

She explained that this fictitious certificate must be renewed every three months, and she has already done so once. However, under this status, she is ineligible to work part-time or engage in any paid artistic activities, including selling her work or receiving art funds.

"At the same time, European artists participating in the residency are working part-time, participating in other exhibitions for a salary and selling their works," she said. "The scholarships given to artists are for artistic activities and research, and they are not that much compared to the minimum living expenses of artists. I think that many artist residencies in Europe are actually hindering non-European artists from entering the European art market by refusing to issue artist visas and instead giving scholarship visas."

Park majored in printmaking at Hongik University in Seoul, and experimental film and photography at HBK Braunschweig in Germany. Her initial work was created with the use of diverse media such as photos, videos and performances, but this has transformed by crossing over different genres, including live music, social innovation, broadcasting and TV, theater and musicals and film through collaboration with migrant workers, migrant women and refugees. She has served as a nonstanding member of the Committee of the Arts Council Korea. Since 2009, she has been the CEO of Salad, a social innovation art company, producing and distributing culturally diverse content with immigrant artists living in Korea.

Visit parkkyongju.com for more information.

Bereket Alemayehu is an Ethiopian photo artist, social activist and writer based in Seoul. He's also the co-founder of Hanokers, a refugee-led social initiative and a freelance contributor for Pressenza Press Agency.