January 2023

The traditional Korean cultural festival ¡°Yeondeunghoe (lantern lighting festival),¡± listed as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, was in full bloom in 2022 in the middle of Paris, France. Elephants and lions marched, dragons flew and hundreds of lotus lanterns were lit with the well wishes for a bright and happy world. What kind of tall tale is this? Thanks to media art, this far-fetched story has become a reality.

Yeondeunghoe in France

In 2021, the Korean Cultural Center France (hereinafter referred to as KCC France) remodeled the performance hall and installed projection mapping for media art exhibitions on two sides. Projection mapping is a type of technology that transforms an ordinary object into a work of art through the use of computer graphic images displayed by a beam projector. KCC France successfully held a one-month media art exhibition ¡°Cubicle Imagine¡± in 2021, an event that attracted 16,000 visitors.

Thanks to the incredible response from the local public, KCC France expanded the projection mapping from two sides to four in 2022. The ¡°Yeondeunghoe Festival Special Exhibition: A Feast of Light and Color¡± was held from June to September 2022 in a place where more realistic and vivid media art exhibitions had become possible.

Yeondeunghoe was reinterpreted as an artistic video and displayed on the wall while flowers bloomed on the floor wherever people stepped. Warm starlight poured down from the ceiling as if to shine a spotlight on the true purpose of Yeondeunghoe - to send wishes of happiness and peace.

Although it was only a video projected on the wall and floor, visitors were able to experience the same breathtaking beauty and spirit as they would when actually attending Yeondeunghoe in Korea.

French locals experiencing media art based on the theme Yeondeunghoe

An Ongoing Story

The ¡°Yeondeunghoe Special Exhibition¡± went viral on social media, and people began to flock to KCC France. Even before the opening of the exhibition, the KCC experienced the rare scene of long queues of people. Over 50,000 people visited Yeondeunghoe Special Exhibition throughout the event period. The exhibition had the highest number of spectators for a single event KCC France had ever seen. The exhibition netted a box office record equal to the annual number of spectators for the Musée d¡¯Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

However, the exhibition was even more meaningful because it presented a new way of showcasing traditional Korean culture through media art rather than typical Hallyu (Korean wave) content such as K-pop and K-dramas. In particular, the content of the exhibition combined the beautiful traditions of Korea and artistic imagination of Korean artists with the country¡¯s impressive technology. The exhibition also proved to be significant as it showed Korea as a cultural powerhouse as well as an IT powerhouse.

A writer for Vivre Paris, a magazine that specializes in arts and culture in Paris, said, ¡°As soon as I crossed the threshold of the Cultural Center, I felt as though I was actually at the Korean Yeondeunghoe Festival. The media art exhibition created a harmonious blend of fantastic interactive content, music and lighting to make it feel like you had entered a magical world.¡± Media art has the power to move beyond the barriers of language and culture as well as time and physical distance. This is yet another reason why media art is attracting attention as a harbinger of the new Hallyu.

In the future, KCC France plans on creating various forms of realistic content through collaborations with major domestic museums and expert digital media design groups. KCC France hopes that the projection mapping exhibition hall will become a channel for French people to experience Korea in a much more vivid way.

(Top)KCC France¡¯s special Yeondeunghoe exhibition was a hit with all who came to see it.
(Bottom left)Eco-friendly tote bag, a souvenir from the special Yeondeunghoe exhibition (Bottom right) Publicity poster for the special Yeondeunghoe exhibition