The 19th Seoul Queer Culture Festival kicked off Friday with the event “PRISM OF ART: Human rights bloom in culture and art.”
Sponsored by the Embassy of the Netherlands in Seoul, the event took place on the 11th floor annex of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
The occasion served as a preliminary roundtable discussion for the exhibition of the “Amsterdam Rainbow Dress,” featuring Arnout van Krimpen and Diederik Lujit from the Amsterdam Rainbow Dress Foundation, artist Nahwan Jeon, content creator SOO NOT SUE and artist group Okin Collective, among other guests.
(Rainbow Dress Foundation)
The Amsterdam Rainbow Dress is “a work of art that calls for openness and inclusiveness, encouraging people to actively contribute to, defend and share (acquired) freedoms,” an official website dedicated to the artwork says.
The dress is made up of the flags of 75 countries where homosexuality is punishable by law. These flags were carried in the Pride Walk parade on the opening day of EuroPride 2016, an LGBT pride event, to raise awareness for the issue of treating homosexuality as illegal.
In addition, the bodice of the dress is constructed of four flags of the city of Amsterdam to represent Amsterdam’s permanent status as a safe haven for LGBT refugees. The dress itself is enormous, over 15 meters in diameter.
The “Amsterdam Rainbow Dress” website refers to it as a “living work of art.” As such, when any of the countries change their laws to no longer penalize homosexuality, its flag will be replaced with the rainbow flag, in the hopes that all the flags on the dress will turn into rainbows.
The Amsterdam Rainbow Dress Foundation has exhibited its dress across Europe and the US, including Rotterdam, Athens, New York, and San Francisco. The dress will be exhibited on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. in Seoul Plaza, where the 19th Seoul Queer Pride Parade is held. Viewing is open to the public.
By Aaron Shi (ashi@heraldcorp.com)
