With fine art lovers still grieving the death of Yayoi Kusama — the Japanese pop art minimalist, and arguably the world’s most popular contemporary artist — global interest in her Asian artist contemporaries is blossoming.
In Seoul, South Korea, renowned Korean artist Do Ho Suh commands the spotlight with the most extensive presentation of Suh’s work to date. This expansive exhibition presented by Genesis Motor at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) gathers approximately 500 artworks, including drawings, sculptures, videos and installations from Suh’s 30-year career — both old and new, seen and unseen.
The exhibition delves deeply into the artist’s enduring investigations: the concepts of home and migration, the interplay of memory and identity, and the relationship between the individual and the collective. Notable works include his iconic “Rubbing/Loving” series, in which the artist traced the memory of places he once inhabited by covering them with traditional Korean paper, “hanji,” and rubbing their surfaces with graphite and colored pencil.
The exhibition also features the “Bridge Project” — which scales the concept of building a bridge that connects three homes Suh has lived, blurring the spatial, temporal, psychological, and cultural boundaries between Seoul, New York, and London — alongside early works like “Who Am We?” (2000) and “Floor” (1997–2000), which explore the relationship between the individual and collective society.
Several newly created or repurposed works supported by Genesis for “The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House” at Tate Modern, London last year, will be presented to audiences in Korea for the first time. Among them are “Nest/s” (2024) and “Perfect Home: London, Horsham, New York, Berlin, Providence, Seoul” (2024). These life-sized installations recreate the artist’s past and present residences using layers of translucent fabric. Visitors are invited to walk through these immersive structures, reflecting on the relationship between migration and settlement, place and memory.
A large structure titled “Seed Bank” houses the artist’s foundational works, including childhood drawings and his university projects. Elsewhere in the exhibition, the newly unveiled “Memory of Love” (2026) poignantly explores the deep connections between the body, clothing and the home, extending the artist’s personal memories to the lived experiences of the audience.
From Dec. 18, the artist’s renowned large-scale installation, “Apartment A, Unit 2, Corridor and Staircase, 348 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011, USA” (2012), will be added to the soaring open space of MMCA Seoul Box to complete the exhibition.
“We are honored to support the ‘Do Ho Suh’ exhibition, which invites nuanced reflection on the fundamentals of human existence through the interwoven relationships between memory and space, and the individual and collective,” said DooEun Choi, Art Director of Hyundai Motor. “We hope the exhibition offers the audience an artistic experience that opens new perspectives on the self and the world, while illuminating values that transcend time and space.”
Reflecting its commitment to cultivating authentic experiences, the Hyundai and Genesis automotive company continues to expand its collaborations with leading art institutions and visionaries to inspire profound cultural dialogue with broader audiences, building on initiatives such as The Genesis Facade Commission at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Genesis Talks at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
