Youngle Keem is an artist whose practice encompasses text, still images, and moving images. In recent years, she established the one-person publishing house Sail and Anchor, through which she has translated and published works including The Book of Zero and Lao She’s science fiction novel Cat Country.

As might be expected from an artist who already moves across the genres and contexts of diverse media, Blue Land likewise constructs its imagery through a similar strategy. The work brings The Smurfs, the legendary comic created by Belgian cartoonist Pierre Culliford, better known by his pen name Peyo, into a Korean context.

Although its creator never acknowledged such an interpretation, The Smurfs was for a time read as an allegory of communist society; it was also not free from controversy over racism because of the “Black Smurfs” episode. How, then, does this work interpret the Smurfs?

Just as the original resists a single interpretation and instead branches into multiple readings, Blue Land follows the same path. Rather than settling on one meaning, it inserts a plausible narrative and conducts a kind of thought experiment by tracing the trajectory of the Smurfs.

In Blue Land, the Smurfs come to Korea in 1904 after seeing a recruitment notice for the construction of the Belgian Consulate. They work diligently to erect the building, yet the cornerstone of the completed structure bears none of their names. Instead, it records only the names of figures from powerful nations such as Belgium and Japan, which exerted considerable influence during that period.


Youngle Keem, Blue Land, 2019, Single-channel video, FHD, 17 min 40 sec © Youngle Keem

Inspired by the fact that although laborers visibly exist within cities and towns and construct buildings in response to the demands and needs of others, the names of the “workers who actually built them” are rarely recorded—unlike those who supplied the money or held power—Blue Land extends this observation into the context of Korean cities.

It compares these laborers to the Smurfs, who work together tirelessly to build and create things, yet are difficult to distinguish from one another because of their similar appearances and exceptionally small stature.

At first, the metaphor may seem to leap abruptly across several conceptual steps. Yet, combined with the story-like narration and the circumstances experienced by these “Korean Smurfs” within the work, it emerges as a compelling symbol.

The “Smurf” may be an unnamed laborer, a migrant whose home can easily be taken away, or someone who struggles to secure a place of their own in the city and remains continually vulnerable to displacement and threat.

Although the context shifts slightly from one sequence to another, these figures share a common condition: they are members of the city and the community, and no matter how small or difficult to see they may be, they must never be casually disregarded.

By comparing these individuals—who share certain circumstances yet have been difficult to consider collectively—to the Smurfs, director Youngle Keem emphasizes that they are not separate or isolated beings, but subjects who should be considered and examined together.

Within the brief running time of this chronicle, which lasts less than thirty minutes, viewers may find themselves wanting to fill in the gaps of a history that the work has not fully revealed—or that has never been constructed in the first place.

Just as The Book of Zero, recently published by Sail and Anchor, considers a new form of “public art” together not only with artists and specialists but also with citizens and activists, Blue Land likewise attempts a “new approach” to those who have been marginalized or inadequately documented.

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