For the past three years, the Korean artist Onejoon Che, a former military police photographer, has been photographing monuments in sub-Saharan Africa designed in North Korea. The hardline Communist state has a near monopoly when it comes to overbearing, blingtastic public monuments. The results, some of which are on show in the New Museum Triennial (until 24 May), are startling. Heroes’ Acre in Windhoek, Namibia consists of a marble obelisk and bronze statue of the Unknown Soldier plus a grandstand for 5,000 people; while African Renaissance in Dakar, Senegal is a 160ft-tall bronze statue built in 2010 to mark the 50th anniversary of Senegal’s independence from France. The Musée du Quai Branly helped fund the ongoing project, called the Mansudae Master Class after the Mansudae Overseas Project Group of Companies that built the monuments. “Ironic though reality may seem, in my opinion the dishevelled political situation in Africa reflects the Korean situation,” Che told Art Radar. “Although on the surface South Korea today appears like a developed country, we are still overcoming the Cold War situation while being fixed with ideologies established by the Japanese colonisation and the American intervention.”
