Jinhyun Cha, Post-Border Line

February 7–March 3, 2019
First Thursday opening reception: February 7, 6:00–9:00 PM
Artist talk: Thursday, February 7, 5:00 PM

Blue Sky Gallery 
122 NW 8th Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97209 USA
503-225-0210
Tuesday – Sunday, 12 – 5 pm
First Thursday 6 – 9 pm
bluesky@blueskygallery.org
http://www.blueskygallery.org/
All Blue Sky events and programs are free and open to the public.

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 Kyung-sung University and completed a doctoral course at Hong-ik University. His first photography project, Portraits of 108, won the grand prize in the first Sangsang-madang 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 Go-Eun Museum of Photography in Busan and in 2018 at FotoFest Biennale in Houston, Texas. This is Cha’s first solo exhibition of Post-Border Line in the United States.