SPACE November 2026 (No. 708)
The exhibition ‘Do Ho Suh’ opened at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), Seoul, on Aug. 27. This solo exhibition brings together some 500 works spanning the artist’s career, from his early student works to major pieces and ongoing projects, reflecting Suh’s exploration of life, space, and humanity through his distinctive formal language. Seol Wonji, Curator at MMCA, explains that the exhibition was ‘organised around the roots of Suh’s creative practice and the connections that run throughout his body of work.’ In preparing the exhibition, Seol recognised that Suh’s exploration of place and movement, and of the individual and the collective, did not begin with the diasporic identity he encountered after moving to the U.S. to study, but had been present in his work since his early practice in Korea. Seol adds that the exhibition also seeks to broaden the understanding of his work by ‘reconsidering it through Korean sensibilities and perspectives, beyond the Western lens through which it has long been interpreted’. The decision to title the exhibition simply ‘Do Ho Suh’, without a subtitle, reflects this curatorial intention. Rather than defining his extensive body of work through a particular perspective, the exhibition seeks to unfold it in the broadest terms. The individual galleries likewise have no separate themes, allowing the works to be presented as a single interconnected artistic world rather than divided by theme, medium, or period. The circular circulation route further embodies the idea that all encounters and connections eventually come together again.
Rubbing/Loving: Seoul Home (2013–2022) ©Do Ho Suh / Photo Sebastian Mrugalski
The exhibition begins with ‘Seed Bank’ in the corridor outside the galleries. It brings together childhood drawings and sculptures, along with works and records made before Suh began his career as an artist. Revisiting these early works after many years, Suh was surprised to discover in them the seeds of the practice he would continue to develop over the next three decades. He describes the exhibition as ‘not a retrospective, but a gathering of the sources of my current practice’. Gallery 3 presents around 200 two-dimensional works. From early works consisting of lines drawn on paper to drawings made with thread, one can readily trace how Suh’s practice has evolved and expanded through different materials and techniques. Experimental works such as Haunting Home (2019), which uses thread and gelatin tissue to blur the boundary between two and three dimensions, demonstrate that Suh’s formal explorations are not confined to space alone. Gallery 4 features Rubbing/Loving: Seoul Home (2013–2022, hereinafter Rubbing/Loving), while Gallery 5 presents Perfect Home: London, Horsham, New York, Berlin, Providence, Seoul (2024, hereinafter Perfect Home). For Rubbing/Loving, Suh placed dakji (Korean mulberry paper) over the surfaces of the hanok where he once lived and rubbed the paper with graphite to capture the forms and textures of the house. The artist explains that he linked the two words because ‘the act of rubbing itself felt very much like an act of loving.’ Perfect Home employs Suh’s signature technique of working with translucent fabric. Unlike his other works, which replicate entire buildings in fabric almost like casts, Perfect Home brings together within a single space individual elements from homes in the various cities where Suh has lived – including door handles, locks, faucets, and light switches – all recreated in fabric. Gallery 5 also presents Bridge Project. Beginning in 1999 with the idea of an imaginary bridge connecting Seoul and New York, the project expanded in 2024 with the addition of London, envisioning a ‘perfect home’ near the Arctic, at a point conceived as the midpoint of the three cities.
Perfect Home: London, Horsham, New York, Berlin, Providence, Seoul (2024) ©Do Ho Suh
Works also extend beyond the galleries. Nest/s (2024) and Inverted Monument (2022) are displayed in the lobby, while MMCA Studio presents smaller-scale works, including Memory of Love (collaboration with RE;CODE, 2026), that embody memories of the artist’s family, his most fundamental bonds, through clothing. At Seoul Box, where Home Within Home Within Home Within Home Within Home (2013) attracted considerable attention when MMCA Seoul opened, the large-scale Apartment A, Corridors and Staircases, 348 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011, USA (2012) will go on view from Dec. 18. Taking advantage of the expansive space, this is the first time that all units of the work can be seen together as a whole. The exhibition runs until Feb. 9, 2027.
