About:
Inspired by his peripatetic life, Do Ho Suh has long ruminated on the idea of home as both a physical structure and a lived experience, the boundaries of identity and the connection between the individual and the group across global cultures.
In work for which he is widely celebrated, the artist meticulously constructs proportionally exact replicas of dwelling places, architectural features, or household appliances from stitched planes of translucent, coloured polyester fabric. Reflections of places the artist has inhabited, such as his childhood home or Western apartments, these delicately precise, weightless impressions seem to exist between imagination and reality. Suh has spoken of the distinctive openness to the environment of Korean homes; more than repositories of personal memory or nostalgic projections, his works respond to the indistinct boundaries between psychic interior and objective exterior, which make of home an ongoing lived function rather than a physical structure.
Transitory, connecting spaces – corridors, staircases, bridges, gateways – often feature in the artist's drawings, sculptural installations and public works: rather than borders, Suh is fascinated with the linking spaces through which the body travels between cultures, the transitional moments in his own life and the passages – physical or philosophical – that transport individuals through various stages of their lives.
bio curtesy of Victoria Miro
“The space I am interested in is not only a physical one, but an intangible, metaphorical and psychological one. For me, ‘space’ is that which encompasses everything.”
“That's the most common misconception I get. I question whether such a thing as a truly personal place exists. The home I live in has been lived in by countless people before me, and the memories of others are woven together, so it is not my home, it is ‘our home’. Home is a space within a larger community of destiny, and I am a passer-by. A house or castle is immovable real estate, but I make that space movable by using a lightweight, foldable material, a thin fabric. I attempt to turn the existing system upside down.”
“For me, memory is central to what I do. We bring our memories with us when we move and my memories inhabit the architectural pieces that I create, which are physical, but also psychological and metaphorical. What I bring is a skin, the thin skin of the bigger physical thing. The idea to use the semi-translucent fabric came about when I was trying to find a way to realise the intangible quality of memory. The material is fragile like our memories and it also has that haziness that many people associate with the past.”
“My work is not loud. I am not trying to put across a message, but underneath I think there is quite a radical attitude towards the world. The idea of making a mobile architectural space from an immobile one is a very radical idea, but visually it is quite subtle, and there is beauty and colour and craft, all of which maybe distract people from the underlying politics.”
About our Artist Features
Our artist features series is a continuation of our past Instagram story series. Meant as a brief introduction to an artist, we aim for these post to be a reprieve to your scrolling, a stimulus for creativity and dialogue, and a fun way to share images and ideas that are inspiring us.