2026 Nam June Paik Media Art Festival “Cosmic Color Opera” Exhibition Open

On April 30, Neutinamu Library, Between the Breezes (BBU), and AVIAS participated in the inaugural Nam June Paik Media Art Festival exhibition Cosmic Color Opera, which opened at the Nam June Paik Art Center in Yongin, Korea.

In 2024, through Neutinamu Library’s “Global Doughnut Day,” a connection was first formed between AVIAS, a community based in a refugee settlement in Uganda, and Between the Breezes (BBU), a support group for families of children with developmental disabilities in Korea. Though separated by vastly different environments, the two communities continued to meet and communicate online, using art as a way to share their lives, emotions, and personal stories. Through drawing, children in the refugee settlement discovered new ways to express creativity and everyday experiences, while children in Korea explored their own perspectives and identities within their local community.

The exhibition In Each Other’s Orbits is an attempt to move across the social boundary of “developmental disability” faced by BBU and the physical boundary of “refugeehood” experienced by AVIAS through the shared language of drawing. Beyond nationality, language, and disability, the worlds the children created on paper connect two communities that had each lived within different landscapes of isolation, forming a gentle space of encounter and relation.

The works installed throughout the exhibition were created through a year-long exchange between 12 children from Korea and 27 children from AVIAS in Uganda. The process reflects how their individual worlds gradually intersected and unfolded together through shared experiences and artistic collaboration. In the final stage of the exchange, the children closely observed photographs of one another and created portraits in response. Through these drawings, traces of attention, empathy, and communication emerge visually within a single shared image.

The drawings that arrived across great distances and time differences are also signals from children seeking to exist beyond the fixed frames of “refugee” and “disability,” as singular and irreplaceable individuals. In Each Other’s Orbits is less a presentation of finished outcomes than a record of attempts to reach one another across distance. Much like Nam June Paik imagined the world as an interconnected network through satellites, this exhibition envisions a new world shaped by children from Korea and Uganda crossing paths within each other’s orbits despite the different conditions of their lives.

About the Organizations:

Neutinamu Library is a citizen-powered, independent public library located in Suji-gu, Yongin, South Korea. Privately funded and rooted in community care, it serves as a public space for learning, connection, and local action. 

AVIAS(African Visual Artists Associates), a group of refugee artists from Uganda, and their creative collaboration with Breeze Between Us, a Yongin-based self-support group for families of children with autism.

Breeze Between Us (BBU) is a village community that emerged from the landscape of social isolation faced by children with developmental disabilities and their families. Transcending psychological barriers and the distance created by a lack of understanding, we discover disability-friendly spaces across the neighborhood and connect them with families, mapping out a new communal topography.

More Exhibition Information: https://njp.ggcf.kr/exhibitions/239