What is the moral responsibility of the artist? With balding pate, white goatee and mischievous mien, Sung Neung Kyung is sitting in his studio in Seoul, South Korea, looking back half a century to the country’s authoritarian regime and wondering whether, as a radical young artist, he made a difference.
“I have to say, thinking back to my artistic practice then from the luxury of hindsight, I feel that my activities at the time were not political enough,” he says via an interpreter beside him on a Zoom call. “I feel that I was carrying the voice of a mosquito. It was just so small and, because of that, I am ashamed.”
