The artist, after two years of research into the history and politics between North and South Korea and visiting North Korea and undertaking an Asialink Residency at the Goyang National Art Studio in Seoul, studies two reunification monuments in North and South Korea: The ‘Three Charters for National Reunification’ monument near Pyongyang and the ‘Statue of Brothers’ in Seoul.
 
Mata Dupont has animated those monuments to play with utopian ideas of reunification, and the significance of the “embrace” as representation of the reunification in the South Korean national psyche. The two figures from the ‘Three Charters for National Reunification’ monument embrace in joy, only to have their bliss dissipate and a new, and unexpectedly uncomfortable, era emerge. The work references DPRK propaganda, K-pop, texts by Andrei Lankov and Lee Eung-joon, the romantic notions of unification used by artists, filmmakers and writers in South Korea during the late 90s and early 21st Century, and the “Sunshine Policy” era of soft-line attitude to the North. [Pilar Mata Dupont]