Do Ho Suh's 'Walk the House' Explores the Many Meanings of Home
Opening at Tate Modern this spring.
A major survey exhibition of works by South Korean artist Do Ho Suh is coming to the Tate Modern this spring, marking his first London solo in over twenty years. Titled The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House, the show traces three decades of Suh’s compelling practice, adding new site-specific works to his iconic oeuvre of translucent architecture. The artist takes viewers on an introspective journey that explores the multifaceted nature of home, identity and how we inhabit the world, culling personal and collective memory in a dynamic and reflective showcase.
The title of the show, Walk the House, draws from an expression referring to the hanok, a traditional Korean house that can be disassembled and rebuilt at a new site. Drawing on the idea of a transportable home, Suh bears witness to a collision of architecture, space, the body and memory. “The space I’m interested in is not only a physical one, but an intangible, metaphorical and psychological one,” he expressed. “For me, ‘space’ is that which encompasses everything.”
The exhibition will see several fabric replicas of the artist’s work and living spaces, including Nest/s (2024), a colorful tunnel corridors and entryways, and for the first time, Perfect Home: London, Horsham, New York, Berlin, Providence, Seoul (2024), an outline of the artist’s present London homestead, freckled with vibrant architectural details – doorknobs, light switches and electrical sockets.
Spanning installation, sculpture, video and drawing, Walk the House will also feature standouts such as Who Am We? (2000), a constellation of tens of thousands of tiny portraits collected from high school yearbooks; the 2018 photogrammatic film Robin Hood Gardens; and Rubbing/Loving Project: Seoul Home (2013-2022), a decade-long homage to traditional Korean rubbing practices, where the artist covered the entirety of his childhood home in paper and graphite impressions.
Co-curated by Nabila Abdel of the Hyundai Tate Research Centre and Tate Modern’s Dina Akhmadeeva, the major exhibition marks the European expansion of Genesis Art Initiatives, a wider collaboration between Genesis and the institution, which produced Lee Bul’s Met facade commission last fall.
The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House will be on view in London from May 1 to October 19. Head to the museum’s website for more information.
Tate Modern
Bankside,
London SE1 9TG,
England
