Are you lonely, too?, 2014

Ham, who lives in South Korea, commissions work. Large-form embroidery works are hand-stitched in North Korea, using a technique that would, in the West, be both prohibitively expensive and with an impracticable degree of workmanship. Design blueprints for the textiles come from the artist, with some containing text. These texts are carefully scrutinized by censors, often becoming edited or removed, and this process leaves its impression on the textile designs. Something new comes into play. Here the censorship doesn’t create a deficiency, but rather a surplus. It works for Ham in the sense that it re-routes the art in a direction towards unscripted meaning.