Online meeting with the author Han Kang of "Human Acts"
On Thursday 31 March at 10.00 the Korean Cultural Center in Italy in collaboration with the Gwanju Biennale organized on the Zoom platform, as part of the project of the special exhibition in Venice "To where the flowers are blooming" in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Movement for Gwangju Democracy, the online meeting with the Korean author Han Kang of "Human Acts".
The title of the exhibition "to where the flowers are blooming" is taken from chapter 6 of Han Kang's book "Human Acts" which has as its theme the pains of the Gwanju Democracy Movement. The narrative of chapter 6 is personified by a mother who has lost her child and tries to get out of the darkness brought by this serious wound to go to a brighter and brighter place, precisely "where flowers bloom".
The book by the Korean author was translated and distributed in Italy in September 2017 with the title "Human Acts", receiving great approval from Italian readers and also winning the Malaparte prize, an Italian literary recognition for international personalities.
The event was an opportunity to give Italian readers the opportunity to hear directly through the voice of Han Kang to better understand the historical background of the novel set during the Gwanju Movement for Democracy and also to better understand korean literature.
The meeting was conducted in Korean by Professor Giuseppina De Nicola, professor of Sapienza University of Rome (where she teaches Korean language and history), but the whole meeting was translated simultaneously to allow all listeners to understand the event.
The meeting was promoted for two weeks by the Korean Cultural Institute on its social network channels, also receiving reader questions for Han Kang, which were selected and asked by Professor De Nicola to the Korean author.
The meeting lasted about 80 minutes to which those interested connected through the link to Zoom distributed by the Korean Cultural Institute through its communication channels and a total of 194 people participated at the same time.
The special exhibition for the 40th anniversary of the Gwangju Movement for Democracy "to where the flowers are blooming" will be open to the public from April 20 to November 27 for about 7 months at the "Spazio Berlendis" in Venice. Furthermore, as part of this project, the Korean Cultural Institute and the Gwangju Biennale plan to organize a "Docent Education Program".
The exhibition aims to make this historical event known and to make the public understand its context and at the same time to train personalities in the field of contemporary art with sensitive knowledge of Korean literature and the history of Korean democracy.