Like a forbidden fruit, North Korea appears irresistibly attractive. The attraction for the country is commensurate with its apparent inaccessibility. Admission to the country for journalists and photographers alike is difficult and only sporadically granted. Once inside, the state takes charge over itineraries, visits and interviews. North Korea’s obsession with how it is perceived results in fierce attempts at trying to maintain total control over information, both within the country and to the outside world.

An intuitive reaction by the recipients of such overbearing manipulation is to unmask North Korea’s utopian pretence by unveiling the dystopian reality shrouded in propaganda. Propelling such a reaction is a common sense understanding that propaganda and reality are each other’s polar opposites. On closer scrutiny, reality and propaganda are two sides of the same coin. 

When antagonism turns into engagement with the North Korean everyday, a process of introspection is set in motion that allows for a more refined and nuanced pursuit of the relationship between propaganda and reality. When disaffection turns into dedication

and undisputed objectification is replaced by pointed self-reflection, space opens up for nuances. Alice Wielinga’s work seeks out that space. Leaving behind the lingering assumption of objectivity implied in documentary photography, she resolutely asserts the expressive freedom of an artist. In her work, we encounter a kaleidoscopic reality, fragments of photographic observations entwined with segments from North Korean realistic art work tightly woven into an image of an assembled reality. In doing so, Alice Wielinga reflects on the unwieldiness of the objective world and the tangledness of its observation. Her creative intervention exposes reality as a collation of image slices accumulated over time. No didactic forceful view here, but a retiring probing attempt at capturing the confusing layering of everyday North Korean reality.

Koen De Ceuster is an authortiy on North Korean art form the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. The essay is written in for the exhibition  'North Korea, between Propaganda and Reality', a solo-exhibition of Alice Wielinga at The Nutshuis in The Hague, the Netherlands.

Les Rencontres d’Arles

Alice was the laureate of the 2015 edition of Les Rencontres d’Arles with her project North Korea, a Life between Propaganda and Reality. The project premiered as a solos show at the beautiful Eglise Saint Blaise.