Home / Exhibitions / International Mural By Mail - Global Art Festival / May 2021
The International Mural by Mail is a project that gives artists the opportunity to network and communicate visually with other artists on a global scale.
This project brings together artists from opposite ends of the world in a creative visual collaboration. We are working with artists from Zambia to Indonesia to Venezuela, sending large-scale drawings back and forth between us through the mail, which will eventually become 8ft x 16ft murals. Working together in this way allows us to have conversations that are visual as well as verbal, allowing us to make deep, complex connections with collaborators in very different places. JUNE 3, 2021 |
ON DISPLAY FOR THE GLOBAL ART FESTIVAL May 2021 SHOW
Sun Mu - north korea
Sun Mu was born in North Korea and trained by the North Korean Army as a propaganda artist. Later he studied art in college. During a severe famine in the 1990s he fled to South Korea where he works as a painter.
Out of concern for the family he left behind in North Korea he uses the pseudonym "Sun Mu" instead of his real name and does not allow photos of his face. Sun has acquired fame and notoriety for the Socialist Realist style of his paintings, which resemble North Korean propaganda imagery and have even been mistaken for such. One of his portraits of former North Korean leader Kim Il-sung was removed from a Pusan biennale because organizers wanted to avoid problems for exhibiting "pro-communist" art. See more of Sun Mu's art |
Sun himself and art critics have noted that his images are replete with political satire; depicting, for instance, the North Korean leaders in Western clothing. His signature work is the "Happy Children" series of paintings, which show North Korean children displaying the uniform forced smile that Sun says was taught to him at school in North Korea.
An exhibition of his works, scheduled to open at the Yuan Dian Gallery in Beijing at the end of July 2014, was cancelled at the request of the Chinese authorities. He is the subject of the 2015 documentary I am Sun Mu directed by Adam Sjöberg. |
Project Director
John Teply
EXHIBITION ARTISTS
John Teply - United States
Sun Mu - North Korea Dagor - Venezuela Essie Somma - Mexico Robin Ator - United States Brecken Rivara - United States |
Project structure:
We are initiating a series of large-scale murals, created jointly by two artists of diverse cultural background and artistic persuasion, in a collaborative exchange conducted entirely by mail. Full scale mock-up drawings are mailed between collaborating artists. Each begins sketching images on a blank cartoon sheet to be mailed to their partner, who in turn responds by adding elements of their own. This exchange continues until an artist determines a composition complete, and thereupon creates a painting based on the drawing that has been exchanged. On one end, a mural is completed by the participating international artist, and on the other end, another is completed by a local Portland artist. Interested in purchasing or renting art in this show? Get in touch!
Inquiries: [email protected] or call us 503.286.4959 |