An installation in the Korean DMZ wants to build a bridge between North and South Korea
French-Tunisian artist eL Seed shares the story behind The Bridge, a new artwork at the border of North and South Korea.
Last November, when eL Seed began installing his sculpture The Bridge in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea, the prospect of peace between the two countries was unimaginable. In fact, tensions were mounting. Last autumn, North Korea launched several intercontinental ballistic missiles and conducted nuclear tests, and by December, the United Nations had adopted new sanctions against the country.
“We created The Bridge at a time where there was so much tension,” the French-Tunisian artist and TED Fellow says. “The question of reunification — you never heard it. We always heard about the conflict, and about North Korea threatening people. But we never heard the real story from Korean people who were saying ‘We want unification between the two countries.’”
But this spring, The Bridge — which is intended to spark dialogue about the possibility of peace — takes on renewed significance in the wake of potentially breakthrough conversations between North and South Korea.
Commissioned by the Gyeonggi Museum of Art in Ansan, South Korea, and installed with the support of the South Korean military, The Bridge casts the words of renowned Korean poet Kim Sowol across 43 panels of laser-cut aluminum, attached to the chain-link fence dividing North and South Korea.
“Kim Sowol wrote a poem called ‘Unable to Forget,’ which is actually a love poem,” eL Seed says. “But when you look at it in today’s context, it looks like he wrote it for somebody on the other side of the fence, saying, ‘Look, I’ll never be able to forget.’”
Sowol was born in what is today North Korea, but he died in 1934, before the separation of North and South Korea. Many of his poems, including “Unable to Forget,” have become popular songs. In English, the poem reads:
eL Seed has used his signature style of Arabic calligraphy to spread messages of peace and unity around the world, from Paris to Rio de Janeiro to Cairo. (Watch eL Seed’s TED Talk, A project of peace, painted across 50 buildings.) He does the same with The Bridge, translating Sowol’s words into Arabic. “There is a universal beauty to Arabic calligraphy that you don’t need to translate,” eL Seed says. “I think Arabic script speaks to the Korean people. Everyone in South Korea was so open-minded about this project, using Arabic as a symbol of unification.”
The completed version of The Bridge looks completely different from eL Seed’s initial proposal. Originally, he had planned a 65-foot–tall sculpture that curved upward, extending across the fence dividing North and South Korea to create one half of a bridge. “People say that my work creates bridges between people, cultures and generations,” eL Seed says. “I thought, ‘That would be the perfect thing. I would like to build the bridge.’” el Seed imagined that eventually North Korea could install the second half of the bridge.
But the proposal was scrapped due to safety concerns: the South Korean military didn’t want the sculpture to become a military target, so they asked eL Seed to scale his proposal back. Then, after he came across the work of Sowol, he imagined casting the script for “Unable To Forget” in blue — a color eL Seed uses frequently in his work — across the fence. But the military was worried that blue script in the DMZ could become a target too.
So eL Seed used aluminum instead, reflective and neutral. “The aluminum, for me, was the most camouflage thing,” he says. “But beyond the camouflage, you can also see a reflection in it. When you approach the fence from South Korea, and you look towards North Korea, at the same time you see your own reflection. You’re trying to create a conversation with somebody who’s right in front of you.” The Bridge, abstracted and camouflaged, becomes part of the fence itself.
The Bridge has been up for about five months , and eL Seed says that based on preliminary conversations with contacts in North Korea, he is optimistic he will get permission to install the second half of the piece — which will be the same Sowol poem on the North Korean side of the fence.
“When you build a bridge, you don’t build a bridge on one side. You build it from both sides,” he says. “If you want to make peace with somebody, you have to come from each side. It seems that recently, North and South Korea have been able to meet at a point in the middle, at the DMZ. It makes you believe that other conflicts around the world might be solved too, if we can step towards each other.”
The TED Fellows program supports emerging innovators from around the world to raise international awareness of their work and maximize their impact.
