Park Chan-kyong (b. 1965), a media artist, filmmaker, and writer, has explored themes such as the Cold War, division, tradition, and religion, examining Korean society’s reckless pursuit of Western-style modernization and economic growth.
 
Before becoming an artist, Park wrote about art and curated exhibitions. He also collaborates with his brother, film director Park Chan-wook, as the media artist duo "PARKing CHANce."

Starting with his first solo exhibition "Black Box: Memory of the Cold War Images" at the Kumho Museum of Art in 1997, Park has presented photography and video works that address Korea’s division and the Cold War, often focusing on their relationship with mass media and political psychology.
 
For example, Sets (2000) is a slideshow of 160 photographs of sets built in both South and North Korea, including those of the North Korean Film Studio mimicking buildings and streets in Seoul, a set designed in South Korea for urban warfare scenes, and images of the movie set for Joint Security Area (JSA), which accurately recreated the DMZ’s Panmunjom.

The artificial arrangement of these photographs breaks down the geographical context of real places, making it difficult for viewers to distinguish time and space.

In June 2000, the first inter-Korean summit was held since the Korean War, establishing the first direct air route between the North and South. Park created Flying (2005), a 13-minute video edited from footage of President Kim Dae-jung’s one-hour flight to meet North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-il, interspersed with images of the Korean War.
 
The video’s soundtrack features the opening of Isang Yun’s Double Concerto, composed with the hope of reunification. Flying juxtaposes images of North Korean villages, airports, and crowds, revealing a scene of the divided Korean Peninsula as it shifts between Cold War and post-Cold War tensions.

In his 2008 solo exhibition "Shindoan" at Atelier Hermès, Park began a new phase of work reflecting on Korea’s distorted modernization and contemporary society through Korean folk religion and shamanism.

The exhibition featured a 45-minute documentary video Sindoan (2007), which explores the past and present of Sindoan, a sacred area in Namsan-myeon, Gyeryong-si, Chungcheongnam-do, long a site of Korean folk religion. The exhibition also included archival photographs and architectural models.
 
The artist began by re-examining Sindoan, a site that has been continually repressed from the Joseon Dynasty through the Japanese colonial period and into modern times. The work highlights Korea’s history and attitudes toward the ‘Gyeryongsan Culture,’ a local religion often dismissed as a cult, and examines the fear and rejection of superstitions while reconstructing Korea’s distorted modern history.

This reflection on modernity and present through folk religion and shamanism continued with works like Anyang, Paradise City (2010), Manshin: Ten Thousand Spirits (2014), Citizen's Forest (2016). Among these, Manshin, which tells the story of Korea’s modern history and healing through the life of shaman Kim Geum-hwa, was released in theaters.

Citizen’s Forest is a three-channel video-audio piece, spread out like a traditional Korean landscape painting, offering a critical reflection on Korea’s modern history and mourning the countless unnamed individuals sacrificed in times of upheaval. The figures marching through the mountains in the work represent the victims of tragic historical events such as the Donghak Peasant Movement, the Korean War, the Gwangju Uprising on May 18, and the Sewol Ferry disaster.

inspired by two works: the poem Colossal Roots (1964) by Kim Soo-young (1921 – 1968) and the painting The Lemures (1984) by Oh Yoon (1946 – 1986), Park created Citizen’s Forest as a commentary on the irreversibility of history, no matter how tragic, and a consolation for the nameless victims of Korea’s modern era, while also exposing the limits of Korea’s unresolved modernity.

In his 2019 Hyundai Motor Series exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, Belated Bosal depicted modern-day disasters through episodes drawn from Buddhism in a black-and-white negative film.
 
Set in a radioactive area, the film features a protagonist measuring radiation levels in the mountains who later sees her past life at a temple, alongside young people drawing and making objects, and a ‘Bosal.’ The interplay of images involving nature, Buddhist myths, nuclear power plants, and art seems disconnected yet produces a subtle friction. Through this, Park symbolically portrays a society that has lost its coherence.

By looking to the past, Park continues to re-examine the present. His work uncovers distorted points in history, offering comfort to marginalized figures, and through this, he urges us to re-confront our present and consider the future.

the California Institute of the Arts with a MFA in Photography in 1995. Park served as the Artistic Director of the SeMA Biennale Mediacity Seoul in 2014.
 
Park’s work has been exhibited internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions including Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2017), Taipei Biennial (2016), Anyang Public Art Project (2016), Iniva, London (2015), Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2013), and Atelier Hermès, Seoul (2008, 2012). Park was awarded the Hermès Korea Art Award in 2004, and the Golden Bear for best short film at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2011 for Night Fishing.

His works are included in the collection of major art institutions, such as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; KADIST, Paris and San Francisco; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, Nantes; Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul; Seoul Museum of Art; Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan; and Art Sonje Center, Seoul.

References

• 국립현대미술관, MMCA 현대차 시리즈 2019: 박찬경 – 모임 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea (MMCA), MMCA Hyundai Motor Series 2019: Park Chan-kyong – Gathering) 
• 리얼디엠지프로젝트, 박찬경 (REAL DMZ PROJECT, Park Chan-kyong)
• 아뜰리에 에르메스, 신도안 (Atelier Hermès, Sindoan)
• 국제갤러리, 안녕 安寧 (Kukje Gallery, Farewell)
• 국립현대미술관, 박찬경 | 시민의 숲 | 2016 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea (MMCA), Park Chan-kyong | Citizen’s Forest | 2016)