Jinhyun Cha

Jinhyun Cha, Woman in front of “Reunification,” 2013

Jinhyun Cha, Border line between the two countries, 2015

Jinhyun Cha, Bullet marks on the bridge, 2017

Jinhyun Cha, Car entering restricted area for civilians, 2014

Jinhyun Cha, Japanese cranes flying over the Labor Party building, 2014

Jinhyun Cha, Monk beating a moktak, 2014

Jinhyun Cha, Scenery picture and the landscape outside the window, 2013

Jinhyun Cha, Soldier lowering head in front of the torpedoed warship, 2013

Jinhyun Cha, Kin running through monuments, 2015

Jinhyun Cha, The magnolia blooming in the Peace Park, 2015

Jinhyun Cha, Two flagpoles and a soldier, 2015

Jinhyun Cha, Woljeongri Station, 2013

Jinhyun Cha, Woman looking at Freedom Bridge, 2014

Jinhyun Cha, Soldier standing watch, 2015

Jinhyun Cha, Woman looking at North Korea, 2013

Jinhyun Cha, Soldiers listening to an explanation about the 3rd underground tunnel, 2015

Post-Border Line

February 7–March 3, 2019

Artist talk: Thursday, February 7, 5:00 PM

Post-Border Line by South Korean photographer Jinhyun Cha is a visual contemplation of the 160-mile border between North and South Korea and the ideologies that overlap within it. The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) was created as a result of Cold War interventions in the region by the Soviet Union and the United States that led to the Korean War. The DMZ now functions as a consumer-driven tourist destination, with “Peace Parks” and “Unification Observatories” with entrance fees, souvenirs for purchase, and photo opportunities. For the artist, this commodification of conflict is at odds with this war’s fraught legacy. Through his thoughtfully composed black-and-white images taken within the DMZ, Cha presents a counter-narrative that reflects upon “the calamity caused by ideological conflicts and boundaries between remembering and forgetting.”

Jinhyun Cha (b. 1973) is a documentary photographer based in South Korea. He earned an MFA in Photography from Kyungsung University and completed a doctoral course at Hongik University. His first photography project, Portraits of 108, won the grand prize in the first Sangsangmadang Korean Photographer’s Fellowship in 2008, and the Asian Pioneer Photographer Award at the 6th Dali International Photo Festival in China in 2015. In 2016, he was chosen as a finalist in the Daegu Photography Biennale in Korea. In 2017, his work was exhibited at the Goeun Museum of Photography in Busan and in 2018 at the FotoFest Biennale in Houston, Texas. This is Cha’s first solo exhibition of Post-Border Line in the United States.