The Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art presents “White Night, Dark Day” as its last exhibition of this year which marks the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War.
70 hears have passed since the outbreak of the Korean War, but the war ‘6.25’ still has the power to regulate the minds and living conditions of our society members. Painful memories of the massacre of an entire village, neighbors accusing each other as well as a permanent separation between parents and children brought trauma to both South and North Korea, but these seem to fade into oblivion with time. And those who were involved in the war are gradually disappearing into history. Then how can we remember the war when there is no one left who experienced the war? How can individual memories different from collective narratives composed by the nation be passed on?

"White Night Dark Day" aims to remember and share the sorrow and pain of those who disappeared namelessly in the midst of unimaginable horrors of the war and those who remained invisible despite their sacrifice in the process of confrontation between the separate regimes of South and North Korea. Visitors are invited to reinterpret the stories of the writer who defected to North Korea, artists, ordinary women, the bereaved of those who were killed and people who lost their hometowns, reconstructed from the perspectives of the participating artists. The exhibition addresses the following questions: How can a generation with no experience or memory of the extreme violence of the war connect to this historical event and build a bond with the victims? How can humans believe and love humans in this process?

The title "White Night Dark Day" is inspired by "The White Book", written by writer Han Kang, in which a day that is neither completely light nor completely dark is described as a metaphor for a process of being brought back into the past. In this book, the writer tells of not only the fragility and vulnerability of human beings, but also their dignity to overcome these limitations. We hope the works in the exhibition will encourage visitors to take a step forward towards a brighter place than where they or we are now.