The University Museum and Art Gallery (UMAG) will present North Korea’s Public Face: Twentieth-century Propaganda Posters from the Zellweger Collection from November 29, 2017 to January 28, 2018. Organised in collaboration with North Korea scholar and Stanford Fellow Katharina Zellweger, this will be the first display of such material in Hong Kong.
An opening ceremony of the exhibition was held at UMAG today (November 28). Officiating guests included Consul General of Switzerland in Hong Kong and Macau Mr Reto Renggli, Research Fellow of Stanford University Ms Katharina Zellweger and UMAG Director Dr Florian Knothe.
Rice is Socialism!
Stylistically influenced by communist brutalist propaganda and ideologically informed by the core work on North Korean art—Kim Jong Il’s 1992 publication Treatise on Art (Misullon)—all of these state-commissioned posters promote ‘correct’ forms of socialist realism, thereby documenting the socio-political and economic policies communicated from the Leader to the North Korean people. In so doing, daily activities are aligned with political beliefs. For example, the metaphorical configuration of rice farming with the cultivation of socialism.
