United Paradox

What role does historiography play in the formation of the present? How does contemporary experience inform the commemoration of historical events or lack thereof? Minouk Lim explores history in the present tense—its media representation, collective memory, ritual, and trauma—through her exhibition, publication, and broadcasting station ‘United Paradox’. The South Korea in Lim’s project is a nation with a hole in its chest: a nation of families divided by territorial disputes and traumatized by civilian massacres, victims of an authoritarian power in service of ideological control and economic growth. While reflecting on the representation and reappropriation of historical events in South Korea, Lim and the contributors to this publication explore ways of working through the past in a present that prefers to forget.