Exhibition 'Dear You, Unrelated' Reinterpretation of 'The Widow' by Korea's First Female Director Park Nam-ok

The Seongbuk Cultural Foundation will hold the exhibition ⟪2025 Seongbuk Newspaper Project: Park Nam-ok⟫ 〈Dear You, Unrelated〉 from October 13 (Monday) to 26 (Sunday) at the Art Exhibition Hall of the Korea National University of Arts Seokgwan-dong Campus. This exhibition is part of the Seongbuk 2030 Cultural Vision Project, which archives modern and contemporary cultural artists of Seongbuk and reinterprets them through the lens of contemporary artists. This year, it will shed new light on Park Nam-ok (1923-2017), Korea's first female film director, and the footsteps of Seongbuk filmmakers, reviving them with the sensibility of contemporary art.

The exhibition 〈Dear You, Unrelated〉 will showcase works centered around the director's only film 〈The Widow〉 (1955) along with archival materials of Director Park Nam-ok. Notable new generation directors Kim Tae-yang, Son Gu-yong, Lee Mi-rang, and Lee Jong-soo will participate as artists, presenting three new works as well as re-edited versions of existing works. They will imaginatively restore or vary the endings and narratives with different cinematic languages, evoking scenes from 〈The Widow〉 and presenting them to contemporary audiences. Additionally, artists Bang Jeong-a and Ju Hwang, who have continuously showcased female narratives in contemporary art, will present works that evoke feminine subjectivity and a sense of solidarity through painting and photography, respectively.

Like the 'unrelated people' who gathered for a film in the 1950s, this exhibition 〈Dear You, Unrelated〉 is expected to be a time to reflect on the meaning of contemporary art through 1950s films and share new solidarity and experiences, transcending a gap of 70 years.