I always sought for some connection between my subject of study, Korean art & archaeology, and new second home Senegal. And now it seems to have come pretty close, at least temporarily.
Major newspapers in Korea, Senegal and internationally reported about the giant bronze monument named "African Renaissance Monument" on top of two barren hills "Les Mamelles" near Dakar International Airport in 
Senegal. Now it is completed. At 50 metres in height, the monstrosity is taller than the Statue of Liberty in New York and represents a heroic couple apparantly about to launch their child into the sky. A panal at the foot of the monument reports the cost of the construction to be US$ 25 million, but experts estimate it would have been nearer $ 70 million. The Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade said that he had "no budget for the African Renaissance, so instead offered a prime chunk of state-owned land in exhange, which North Korea has since resold at a large profit.
Senegal. Now it is completed. At 50 metres in height, the monstrosity is taller than the Statue of Liberty in New York and represents a heroic couple apparantly about to launch their child into the sky. A panal at the foot of the monument reports the cost of the construction to be US$ 25 million, but experts estimate it would have been nearer $ 70 million. The Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade said that he had "no budget for the African Renaissance, so instead offered a prime chunk of state-owned land in exhange, which North Korea has since resold at a large profit.I am highly curious what the connection between the two governments is. Why trading valuable land for art with the DPRK? Unlikely its purely aesthetic import??
"I'm a bit of an aesthete," says president Wade, and that the monument's "message is about Africa emerging from the darkness, from five centuries of slavery and two centuries of colonialism". "Only the North Koreans could build my statue," says president Wade. Moreover, they offer monuments at a good rate, he says: "I had no money." So in the end it is just about the money? Good for him then that end November 2009 he met president Lee in the Blue House in Seoul along the Korea-Africa Forum. There, particularly economical aid and ties were promised to be increased. Socialist form and capitalist content, or just proof of Wade's "Irrungen und Wirrungen"??In Senegal the statue aroused heated discussions and ongoing criticism, being aesthetically, financially, ideologically highly disputed and interpreted as yet another sign of Mr. Wade's fading sense for Senegalese realities.
Lucky the monument is compensating with socialist realism. And it is promised to last us 1200 years according to So Yong from the North Korean Mansudae Overseas Project Group of Companies (MOP) that exports fine arts made in DPRK!
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