Kyungah Ham's Propaganda Embroidery: Invisible Fibers

In summer 2008, South Korean artist Kyungah Ham (b. 1966, lives in Seoul) discovered a propaganda flyer outside her parents' home in northern Seoul. The flyer, which appeared to come from her childhood, contained images and text from North Korean propaganda. Ham began a clandestine process of having the flyer's imagery recreated as embroideries by anonymous artisans in North Korea, communicating instructions via intermediaries and smuggling the finished works back to the South. The resulting pieces, exhibited internationally, blur the lines between political indoctrination and artistic expression, highlighting the absurdity and danger of inter-Korean communication. The article in artpress (no. 437, October 2016, pp. 64-66) details Ham's practice of 'knotting invisible fibers'—a metaphor for the fragile, hidden connections across the heavily fortified border. Her work has been shown at venues including the Venice Biennale (2013) and the Gwangju Biennale (2014).