To mark 40 years of United Arab Emirates-Korea diplomatic relations, Abu Dhabi’s Manarat Al Saadiyat, in collaboration with the Korean Cultural Center in the UAE and the Korea Foundation for International Cultural Exchange, is organising the special virtual exhibition OGAMDO: Five Scenes of Korean Art, available to tour online until 30 November 2020.
With support from the UAE Ministry of Culture and Youth and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Korea, the exhibition features 40 artworks from 14 contemporary Korean artists. The exhibition has been curated by A-Lounge as a part of the Traveling Korean Arts programme, which introduces select Korean performances and exhibitions to audiences overseas.
“We are proud to partner with the UAE’s Korean Cultural Center to present this fascinating glimpse of the cutting edge of contemporary Korean artistic practice,” said Fatima Al Yousef, Public Engagement and Programming Head at Manarat Al Saadiyat. “In this virtual format, viewers can access this unique content from anywhere – on the go, or from their own living room. Wherever they are, the innovative presentation has been designed to provide a completely immersive experience from afar. I am sure that all art lovers in the Abu Dhabi community and beyond will not only be inspired the artworks but will come away having learned something new about this rich culture.”
OGAMDO: Five Scenes of Korean Art has been designed to examine the current state of 21st century ‘Korean-ness’, and its presentation in Korean contemporary art. Ogamdo, translated as “crow’s eye view” in English, is a series of 15 Korean poems written by Yi Sang, one of the most famous avant-garde writers of the colonial era. The name ‘Ogamdo’ of the exhibition is not an attempt to follow the poet’s enigmatic and incomprehensible style, but rather a wordplay borrowed from the poem to present five different ways to view today’s Korean art.
The five perspectives that are presented in the exhibition are ‘New Tradition’, ‘city montage’, ‘reconstruction of culture’, ‘everyday affair’ and ‘landscape through the mind’s eye’. The purpose of presenting the five perspectives is to show the original Korean sentiment through different viewpoints, from traditional Korean life to the mixed cultures of the present day, and the state of mind of people living in this fast-paced country.
Even though OGAMDO: Five Scenes of Korean Art is presented as a virtual reality, the exhibition itself is very much analogue. All of the exhibits are actualised with minimal computer graphics in order to increase the level of connectivity with Manarat Al Saadiyat’s exhibition space. Also, virtual presentation of the works does not diminish the beauty and originality of the artists, rather renders itself a new approach of delivering art in the upcoming new post-pandemic era.
OGAMDO: Five Scenes of Korean Art will be a unmissable opportunity to examine the fresh aesthetics of various facets of contemporary Korean art through the technology of virtual reality. The exhibition is accessible through http://www.artogamdo.com/.
