Artists with and without disabilities in Busan team up to create inclusive art

Residents plan their works at the \'Creative Space Dugu\' in Spowon Park, Dugu-dong, Geumjeong-gu, Busan, on the 16th. Courtesy of Busan Cultural Foundation

"Our goal is to go beyond simple collaboration and eliminate discrimination between people with and without disabilities."

On January 16, artists with and without disabilities were exchanging ideas and planning new works at Creative Space Dugu in SPO1 Park in Geumjeong-gu, Busan. A disabled and a non-disabled artist formed a team and talked to each other while walking around a park and playing games.

SPO1 Park is a comprehensive sports facility built during the 2002 Busan Asian Games. When the Busan Cultural Foundation was looking for a space, they were drawn to the idle space in the building of the park’s racetrack. The large site of 290,000㎡ has not only sports facilities, but also plazas and forests, and is connected to a subway station, making it accessible to people with disabilities.

The cultural foundation decided to select artists in the field of art who could work at the space while commuting every day. It limited the artists to those who live in Busan and have no working experience in cultural institutions or organizations. It also excluded those affiliated with schools and religious organizations. After receiving at least 10 portfolios from each applicant, four artists with disabilities and four artists without disabilities were finally selected as first residents and opened the doors of Creative Space Dugu on December 21 last year.

The artists set the goal of pursuing inclusive art. They explained that inclusive art is not just collaboration between people with and without disabilities, but respecting the experiences and perspectives of all artists and approaching issues of discrimination and inequality through art.

Cho Jung-yoon, head of the Living Culture Division of the Busan Cultural Foundation, said, "The first step goal of the Creative Space Dugu is to eliminate the difficulty of creation due to physical disabilities and to increase artistic excellence. If the restrictions on creativity are removed, the equation of 'mentors for non-disabled people and mentees for disabled people' will disappear, and discrimination will also disappear.”

The artists-in-residence did not know what to do at first. Kim Eun-ji (34) and Shim Seung-bo (29) said, "First, we recorded the time we spent together and the scenes of collaboration." It took time. Lee Eun-hye (42) and Lim Yi-jeong (27) said, "We established a rapport by meeting often and repeating familiar behaviors, such as taking a walk, and extracted common colors and completed abstract paintings while looking at objects of the same texture like trees and leaves."

Hwang Seong-je, a 25-year-old author with an autism disorder, expresses her imaginary friends with robots. Robots were the only friends, and robots were everything in the world. After becoming an artist-in-residence, he changed little by little as he learned how to communicate with the world. Hwang said, "I used to live in my own world, but now I can communicate with the world through artists who understand my work and world. I feel like I broke an egg and came out of it.”

Oh Jung-min (35), who collaborates with Hwang, was influenced by her parents, who are both paraprofessionals who help people with disabilities with rehabilitation exercises. "I love being a professional artist and designer, but I also want to contribute to the realization of a 'community without discrimination' in Busan," said Oh, who applied for the residency as she wanted to gain experience to realize social value.

The eight artists held a small exhibition called 'Open Code B' at the end of December last year. The works displayed in the exhibition did not indicate whether the artists have disabilities or not, which eliminated discrimination between people with and without disabilities.

※This article has undergone review by a professional translator after being translated by an AI translation tool.