I was admiring Kim Hung II’s fascinating mosaic Work Team Contest when a thought struck me. It’s an interesting opportunity to look at the legacy of Socialist Realism with the work of Mansudae Art Studio in the DPRK (North Korea).

What struck me about Work team contest was that if you remove the brass band and floral arrangements, the image of workers celebrating efficiency targets isn’t all that different from the workplace imagery of white-collar corporate culture we’re a little more familiar with in the West.

Work team contest

The Mansudae Art Studio is an official artist studio (changjaksa) in Pyongyang, North Korea (DPRK), which employs over 1000 artists across the disciplines of painting, drawing, embroidery and mosaics. There is a rich cultural heritage associated with artistic production in North Korea (DPRK), and ink painting in particular is a revered practice. Artistic themes vary and may be revolutionary, social, political and historical in content, or purely aesthetic, and are expressed in different media such as sculpture, poster art, ceramics and painting. Installed in streets, schools, cinemas and official buildings, they function as a form of public art. These works are created with virtuosic technical skill by groups of artists, reflecting the state’s collective ethos.

This new body of work, created specifically for ‘The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT6), addresses the nature of work and collectivism, the process of collaboration and the fundamental role played by the studio in artistic practice in North Korea. This important project, developed in collaboration with Nicholas Bonner, was the first presentation in Australia of contemporary art from North Korea (DPRK).

WATCH NOW: Mansudae Art Studio (North Korea)

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Do a Google Image Search for “corporate” or “business” and you’ll see what I mean. Managers pointing at whiteboards, fit and forward-looking young professionals, a sense of success and future-building — it’s all there. Even the composition is the same. The only major difference is that the colour red has been replaced with a distinct shade of blue.

It would be a mistake to say that ‘juche’ communism and liberal capitalism offer similar forms of social organisation. But the images used to ‘sell’ them do share unexpected patterns. In the marketplace of ideologies, it seems that little changes when it comes to the politics of images. There may even be a subliminal influence.

Certain aesthetic formations are adjusted to suit the widest possible range of political positions, even extending to those modes of communication we think of as apolitical, such as advertising and news media. The history of propaganda art certainly offers interesting perspectives on the visual culture of the present.

Delve deeper

Curator Nicholas Bonner takes a tour of work from The Mansudae Art Studio in The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT6).

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Feature image detail: Kim Hung Il and Kang Yong Sam Work team contest 2009

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