Civilization: The Way We Live Now

venue:MMCA Gwacheon | 313 Gwangmyeong-ro

Civilization: The Way We Live Now is an international photography exhibition co-produced by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Korea and the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography (FEP), Minneapolis/ New York/Paris/Lausanne. The exhibition features over 500 original prints by over 130 photographers from 32 countries.

This exhibition was organized to attempt a view of our global civilization, as it has taken shape over the past 25 years. Looking through the camera lens, the exhibition focuses on our current "planetary-wide" civilization, and how the world’s citizenery responded with the formation of a distinct "collective life." The audience, upon entering, will be faced by the immensity of contemporary civilization, and its pulsating vitality.

The exhibition approaches "civilization" from an all-encompassing perspective when charting the journey of human society and—as the concept of civilization becomes ever more complex and abstract—it shows how the world of photography embraces and interpretes "civilization," and enriches our understanding of its meaning. Through this exhibition, the public is invited into the collective lives of contemporary society, to survey its formation, and surmise what’s to come in the future.

After its showing at the MMCA, Civilization will travel on to the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, China; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; and the National Museum of Civilization, Marseille, France—where we anticipate the opportunity to introduce the work of the MMCA and the Korean artists participating in this exhibition to a larger world audience. This exhibition is curated by William A. Ewing, and Holly Roussell from FEP, and Bartomeu Marí from MMCA.