South Korean artist Do Ho Suh has spent a year making a life-size paper version of the childhood home his father built and rubbing every inch of it over with graphite.
The unusual installation, titled Rubbing/Loving Project: Seoul Home (2013-2022), is on show for the first time as part of a major survey of Suh’s work opening Friday at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.
Rubbing/Loving is a deeply personal and moving work – one that should connect with everyone’s notion of home, curator Rachel Kent told AAP.
“Is home a solid structure or is it something that you carry with you, an emotional or psychological state?” she said.
“These are things I think that resonate with many people on many different levels.”
Suh is known worldwide for his monumental sculptures, which often recreate ordinary domestic scenes using semi-translucent polyester fabric, while smaller works show everyday items such as phones or radiators in the same shimmering gauze.
Importantly for the expatriate artist – Suh has worked in London for the past decade – his medium of choice means the valuable artworks can be packed down into suitcases or crates.
More than 100 purpose-built containers were needed to transport the 37 works to Sydney and the exhibition set-up has been a substantial task.
The MCA exhibition is the first time a major solo survey of work by the renowned artist has been staged in the southern hemisphere, with the show tracing the past three decades of his output.
Suh’s exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, just before the pandemic was the most popular contemporary art show in the world in 2018, with 1.1 million visitors.
Coming after extended periods at home in the past two years, Kent said the timing of the MCA show was just right.
“It touches on these universal themes around home, family and community relationships and the individual in relation to the wider world,” she said.
It’s also likely to leave gallery-goers noticing their own homes and everyday possessions as though for the first time.
The exhibition is accompanied by Korean film screenings, K-pop dance classes and Korean food.
A survey of contemporary Australian artists aged under 35 also opens at the MCA on Friday.
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