[Gallery Walk] In War's Wake, Nine Chairs Ask... Where Does Peace Sit?

A Former U.S. Military Base Becomes a Stage for Contemporary Art... “DMZ OPEN Exhibition: Staging” Opens
Curated by Artistic Director Kim Sunjung, Featuring 14 Korean and International Artists
Strange Life Forms in a Military Bathroom; Everyday Scen

There are nine chairs, but few places to sit. Some have no backrests or are missing legs, while others have lost even their seats. The ninth chair, assembled from the detached pieces, is just as incomplete. Artist Ahn Kyuchul has arranged these imperfect chairs in a loose circle.

Lee Yeeun, “People of Baekyeon-ri” (2026), installed at Peace Nuri in Imjingak, Paju. The work documents in a large-format photograph a tower built from household items donated by residents of Tongilchon, inside the Civilian Control Line. The precarious sight of worn objects supporting one another captures everyday life and the passage of time in a border village. Gyeonggi-do.

The chairs face one another, but no one is sitting in them. This scene, inside a building once used by U.S. troops, just beyond the Civilian Control Line in Paju, feels strangely familiar. This is a land where the war has stopped but peace remains unfinished. Here, even the empty chairs seem to reflect the reality of an armistice that has lasted for 73 years.

“DMZ OPEN Exhibition: Staging,” which opened on October 12, takes another look at that familiar contradiction through the language of art. It is jointly hosted by Gyeonggi Province and Paju City, and curated by Kim Seonjeong, artistic director of Art Sonje Center. Twenty-six works in painting, photography, video, and installation by 14 artists from Korea and abroad are on view at Camp Greaves and Imjingak Peace Nuri.

The exhibition venue, Camp Greaves, is a former U.S. military base just 2 km from the southern boundary of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Barracks and other facilities where U.S. troops were stationed from 1953 to 2004 remain on the site. Here, art does not wait to be admired on white walls. The building’s old tiles, rusted metal fixtures, and views from its windows all speak alongside the works.

Oh Hyunggeun, "A Smiling Sergeant and a Private Standing at Attention, October 21, 2010" (2010). One work from Oh Hyunggeun's photo series "Theater of the Absurd." The contrasting expressions and postures of two soldiers in uniform bring collective discipline and individuality into focus. The work captures the reality of a generation that has never experienced war yet continues to live under the armistice system. Gyeonggi-do.

One of the strangest scenes unfolds in a former military bathroom. Objects of uncertain purpose sit atop a sink, while a gas mask hanging on the wall emits a reddish glow. This is a new work by artist Yeon Jinyoung. It incorporates U.S. military uniforms and boots, latex, and even a urinal decorated with beads. Yeon focuses on the intersection between the masculinity demanded by the collective that is the military and the “looksmaxxing” culture of maximizing one’s appearance on social media.

Bodies once dressed in uniform and bound by the same rules now overlap with bodies that constantly adorn and groom themselves. The work points to an unexpected resemblance between a military that erases individuality and a society that flaunts it. The location is especially significant. In a space where soldiers once washed their faces and adjusted their uniforms in front of a mirror, strange tools for shaping the self today have taken their place.

Another paradox awaits outside. “Waiting Room” by Lee Yona, who is based in New Zealand, is a structure made of gleaming stainless-steel pipes connected in a complex web. Traffic lights, streetlights, and other urban objects that enable movement are intertwined within it. Yet nothing can actually move forward. The structure seems to bring every route back to where it began. Objects made to facilitate free movement have gathered on land where movement is especially difficult. A traffic light is green, but there is no visible path to cross. The cold texture of the metal contrasts strangely with the green trees of Peace Nuri beyond it.

Nearby, Lee Yeeun’s photograph tells a slightly different story. In the middle of a field, a blue plastic container, old dishes, flowerpots, and other objects are stacked precariously. “People of Baekyeon-ri” documents a tower made from household items donated by residents of Tongilchon, inside the Civilian Control Line. Established in the 1970s as a model village for national security and farming, Tongilchon is where residents have experienced division not as a grand historical event but as a condition of everyday life, repeated day after day. Rather than military facilities or barbed-wire fences, the artist evokes their lives through the objects they used for years. The objects that make up the tower differ in size, material, and purpose. Even so, they precariously support one another. Perhaps life here is not so different.

Ahn Kyuchul, "Nine Chairs" (2026) Nine Chairs by Ahn Kyuchul, installed in the cafe at Camp Greaves in Paju, faces the viewer across an empty space. Some of the chairs are missing legs, backrests, or parts of their seats. Unable to be sat on, they evoke the reality of an armistice in which the war has stopped but peace remains unfinished. Gyeonggi-do.

What makes this exhibition compelling is that it does not stop at presenting the DMZ as a beautiful symbol of peace. Swiss artist Denis Bersch asks what lies behind the word “neutrality” through photographs and videos left by Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission officers after the Korean War Armistice Agreement. The records, filmed between 1953 and 1980, show not only military facilities but also officers enjoying their leisure time and scenes from everyday life in Korea.

Reediting the footage, the artist created the 70-minute work “State Fiction: Seemingly Neutral.” Can the gaze of someone who observes without carrying a weapon truly be politically free? The colors of the old film and its grainy image quality make the questions surrounding the record all the more vivid.

Photographer Oh Hyunggeun’s “Theater of the Absurd” also gazes at the individual hidden beneath the uniform. Two young soldiers stand on a parade ground. One stands at attention, while the other slumps down and looks at the camera. Their contrasting postures reveal their individual personalities and feelings as much as they reflect the military hierarchy. They belong to a generation that has not experienced war, yet live within a system maintained on the assumption that war could resume. That is why the photographs create an unsettling tension without a single dramatic battle scene.

But the passage of time on this land does not belong to humans alone. In “Demilitarizing Moss,” a video made with novelist Lee Hyun and sound artist Rachel Shearer, New Zealand artist Janine Randerson takes the camera’s point of view away from humans. The story’s protagonist is moss, gradually spreading over bunkers, guard posts, and trenches in Cheorwon. These tiny forms of life spread regardless of the military boundaries drawn by humans. The green covering the concrete records the time after the war at a pace entirely different from our own.

Lee Yona, "Waiting Room" (2026). Lee Yona's "Waiting Room," installed at Peace Nuri in Imjingak, Paju. Objects associated with movement, including traffic lights and streetlights, are intertwined within a stainless-steel structure. The green light is on, but the road leads nowhere, evoking the freedom of movement blocked by division. Gyeonggi-do.

The exhibition’s title, “Staging,” comes from an idea by French philosopher and science and technology studies scholar Bruno Latour. It is the notion that nothing appears on its own; things take shape only through their relationships with surrounding objects and environments, and with others. Artistic director Kim Seonjeong said the exhibition aims to transform the DMZ from a simple exhibition venue into a stage where humans and nonhumans, history and the present, enter into relationships with one another.

The curatorial concept is most persuasive when small, ordinary objects linger in the mind longer than grand messages of peace. Ahn Kyuchul’s empty chairs, Lee Yeeun’s worn household items, Yeon Jinyoung’s sink, and Janine Randerson’s moss each evoke the same truth in a different way. History is not preserved only in archives. It also remains in the places where people once sat, the things they used every day, and the life that grows anew in buildings they have left behind. What art at Camp Greaves shows us is less the grandeur of war than the expressions of life that continue after the fighting stops.

The exhibition runs through November 29. Camp Greaves is open to visitors from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and is closed on Mondays. The outdoor works at Imjingak Peace Nuri are freely accessible.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.