In Korean, the word meaning “homesickness” is derived from “nostalgia”, linking melancholy with a specific place in one’s memory. For those in the Korean diaspora, this expression often yields an acute awareness of how they relate to their ancestral homes, generating double selves — anchored in both present and former lands — and prompting thoughts about other potential realities.
Multidisciplinary Korean artist Do Ho Suh, eliding distinctions between the possible and impossible, earnestly entertains flights of fancy without regard for their perceived plausibility. This began during his days as an art student studying painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in the US in the 1990s, when he found himself thinking about his family’s home in Seoul and speculating how he might “take architectural space, which is supposed to be immobile, and bring it somewhere else”. Looking back on it now, he says, “For me, it was a huge leap.”
In the decades since, Suh has earned widespread acclaim for his sculptural approach to this seemingly far-fetched idea. Using lightweight translucent fabric, he creates exact replicas of the spaces he has called home over the years, which can then be folded up and transported at the artist’s whim.
This theme — the disconcerting pairing of possibility and reality — runs through Suh’s current exhibition, Speculations, at Art Sonje Center in Seoul (even if there are no fabric homes). Here, the London-based artist unveils an array of models that shed light on his working process and concept development for even more incongruous ideas.
“I took the ways that architects present their projects — plans, drawings, texts, maquettes and sometimes animations — and that’s how it started,” he says when we meet in a traditional Korean house in the grounds of Art Sonje Center. “But what has followed is that some of the ‘speculations’ have actually been realised.”
Among these are homes and living arrangements that appear out of sync with their surroundings: a traditional Korean house wedged mid-air between two modern buildings (“Bridging Home”, 2010, Liverpool), another precariously perched atop a high-rise apartment (“Fallen Star”, 2012, San Diego) and a fully functional hotel room mounted on the back of a moving van (“In Between Hotel”, 2012-2015, Gwangju). At Art Sonje Center, they are presented as maquettes alongside videos that document their completed states, connecting Suh’s former dreams to their physical manifestations.
Other ideas are still in progress. “I never work linearly,” he says. “I always have so many things going on concurrently.” One of his most protracted projects began with a commission from Public Art Fund in New York to create an outdoor sculpture for the 2008 exhibition Beyond the Monument. His proposal was an empty plinth being carried across a large plaza by a phalanx of toy-soldier-sized figures — a moving monument. Due to safety concerns, Suh ultimately settled on a stationary version, “Public Figures”, although he never gave up on his original vision: “I’ve just been waiting to find the opportunity.”
For Speculations, Suh seized on the chance to bring this idea one step closer to reality, producing a 1:6 scale model with miniature figures whose legs move in unison, enabling the whole structure to roam around a squat pedestal in the middle of the gallery. “Until you see something in action, it’s hard to believe,” he says, confessing that he has been “quietly working” on ways to mobilise a full-size version of the work in hope of someday seeing it come to fruition.
The research process is often more meaningful for Suh than actually realising his speculative proposals. “A Perfect Home: The Bridge Project” (2010-12), for example, would like to link his former homes located in Seoul and New York by physical means. Collaborating with architects, biologists, physicists, theorists and industrial designers, Suh set out to design an immense, habitable bridge that could withstand the ocean’s currents and winds without being swept away. “It’s a ridiculous idea,” he concedes, “but I take it seriously. Once I have the idea that I want to connect those cities, then I’m really invested in it and try to find every solution to make it happen, at least on paper.”
Suh’s recent update for this exhibition added a third terminus to the hypothetical bridge: his present home in London. “The Bridge Project” (2024) triangulates the midpoint of all three cities in a remote location in the Arctic sea, prompting Suh to explore new possibilities for sustaining life in this inhospitable climate. To that end, he teamed up with Korean outerwear brand Kolon Sport to develop a prototype survival suit — “Perfect Home SOS (Smallest Occupiable Shelter)”, 2024 — capable of withstanding the region’s extreme conditions for up to a week. He says, with emphasis, “I’m constantly looking into new technologies. And, you know, I’m waiting.”
While Suh’s speculations may be criticised as quixotic conceptual exercises, he adopts a sombre tone when describing the underlying motivation for such experiments. “All these projects, they actually come from the ultimate fear of not knowing things,” he says. He feels conflicted when inserting himself into theoretical scenarios that he finds both fascinating and unsettling. “You’re thrown into this situation and you’re trying to survive, but you don’t know exactly how you’re going to do it, or where you’re going to end up.”
Venturing into uncharted territory is a constant in Suh’s speculative thinking. It entails a degree of vulnerability that manifests in the exhibition’s catalogue, facsimiles of the artist’s sketchbooks that he has kept since his days in Rhode Island. Although the rough ideas and intimate drawings that fill these pages were never meant to be shown to the public, he decided to share them out of concern that “people only see what’s in the show, and they don’t really see things in between. But for me, it is one continuous practice, on multiple levels.”
To November 3, artsonje.org
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