“All art is propaganda,” said George ORWELL, who authored many biting satires centered on a struggle and desire for power. His insight is true and more than applicable to today’s society, especially now that it has become difficult to interpret propaganda in a collective sense. People without exception highlight the shamanistic aspect of art when trying to trace its origin. Undeniably, it was humankind’s very first form of propaganda. The term propaganda, which came to be used in the 16th century Rome, was at first a proper noun that referred to “the message spreading the faith”; it later became a common noun as it underwent twists and turns of history. With its singular collective connotation removed, it was transformed into a more comprehensive, universal word.
We can discover traces of propaganda in early forms of art, and the example that readily comes to mind is the ancient mural. Ancient murals are characterized by rough strokes, crude representations, and rows of symbols or pictographs standing for words. Such murals were always created in the most straightforward and simple manner for the audience to capture their messages easily. That is why there occurred a movement among Mexican artists to employ murals as a means to convey propaganda; an increasing number of anonymous murals still appear throughout the nation to this day. Artist CHOI Dae Jin also seems to be grasping a clear understanding of such attributes, and, probably for that reason, his murals and drawings serve as the perfect media for the messages he intends to deliver. ‘Human Work’, the title of the new collection and a reflection of the artist’s interpretation of work as labour, adds to the impact.
CHOI’s work reminds the audience of the reflections of Karl MARX and Hannah ARENDT on labour. The artist’s viewpoint on labour appears somewhat similar to MARX’s theory of alienation in labour for the following three reasons: first, it is up to the audience to freely interpret the creations of an artist; second, the drive that enables many artists to create art is highly likely to come from the outside; and third, the act of creation itself fails to provide pure pleasure. As Hannah ARENDT said, the sense of isolation partially felt by artists develops into solitude when they are treated as “animals that labour”, not as “creators of art”. ARENDT once argued that such solitude instigated the public to succumb to totalitarianism and triggered the advent of dictatorship. Such arguments appear in CHOI’s work, forming the Mobius strip with the cause end joined together with the effect end.
Does humankind labour to subsist or subsist to labour? This question has never been clearly answered since the issue of alienation in labour was brought forward in full scale. Does humankind desire to remain part of a group and behave as a single atom, or to break free and stand as an independent being? This question is yet to be answered, too. The landscape of war-stricken Kassel, which can be considered a representative piece of his works, not only symbolically highlights contradictions of totalitarianism, but also reveals the human desire for recognition, which incurred such a catastrophic turn of history. We are already aware of the fact that the artist, completely unconnected to the time and space being portrayed, is the one reinterpreting that historic event and reflecting the result on his artwork. However, such a gap encourages the spectators of the present day to take a new approach towards familiar historical events and many elements influencing society to this day and impart a new meaning. As Axel HONNETH once remarked, the desire to be recognized by others may have driven individuals to join and stick to a larger group and thus have given rise to such a shattering, violent event. In short, CHOI’s ‘Human Work’ is an epic, which illustrates a long series of events from highly personal labour to historic moments filtered through the artist’s exceedingly personal perspectives and beliefs.
- Jihye KIM, Alternative Space LOOP Curator
