When entering a basement exhibition hall of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, a city dweller may first recognize the unfamiliar earthy scent that prevails in the exhibition hall before being mesmerized by the massive presence of a 12-meter-tall monumental piece which is made of actual soil from the paddies.

Lim Ok-sang – known for being part of the Minjung artist group formed in the late 1970s against the military regime to support democracy -- has unveiled new works from the last few years exploring soil as a medium at the state-run museum.

The artist’s retrospective “Lim Ok-sang: Here, the Rising Land” is reminiscent of his 1995 exhibition titled “Rising Land” held at Gana Art Gallery in Seoul, where he showed soil-inspired works. That was when the artist started to use soil in his artworks in earnest. Later in the 2010s, his soil-based artworks expanded to include “soil landscapes,” paintings with processed soil and a mixture of oil and ink.

“We must experience the soil. We must feel and learn about its miracles and vitality,” the artist once said in his book “Viewing Ok-sang: Artist Lim Ok-sang special” published in Korean in 2017.

The 12-square-meter soil installation at the MMCA is comprised of 36 soil panels from the Jangdan Plain in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, a restricted village of Tongilchon -- the Village of Unification in English -- facing North Korea. He gathered soil from the paddies there with natural elements that are neither refined nor processed.

The soil installation “Here, the Rising Land” is also the title of the exhibition. The land cultivated by farmers can be likened to the result of ordinary people’s "blood, sweat and tears." The exhibition can be seen as an homage to ordinary people.