Curator's Statement

Silent Lament is a special exhibition held in in commemoration of Han Kang’s Nobel Prize in Literature. Literature has long served to restore voices silenced by institutional violence and social oppression. Following the path of memory, reflection, and mourning traced by Human Acts, which recounts the May 18 Democratic Uprising in Gwangju, the exhibition presents video and installation works. Audiences are invited to participate by reading the text aloud themselves.

The title Silent Lament evokes a cry within the dreams of those forced into silence by the state—those who still yearn to reveal the truth. This paradoxical phrase alludes to monologues and wounds etched deep into the unconscious. Through the video works and the novel’s narrative, viewers encounter a layered structure where even the reader’s own scars are made visible. Dense strata of collective memory emerge, where past and present, image and text, intersect and intertwine.

In that surreal moment when unarmed, bare-chested citizens stood against advancing soldiers, Dongho returned to us—crossing time and space from the May Uprising. We remember the inevitable choice to resist martial law, should such a moment come again as it did in May 1980. We remember what it means to commit a human act.