Alice Kim-Do Ho Suh Essay-2025

Stitching Borders: Questioning the life of New Nomads and searching for the meaning of home through Do Ho Suh’s architectural installations.

Home shapes our lives.

INTRODUCTION

Home and identity are interconnected When the home is displaced, one’s identity is in danger Identity remains an acute issue for artists raised in one culture who now live and work elsewhere For artists who operate regularly on an international stage, especially if they live and work in more than one location, the collapsing boundaries of local and national communities make establishing a coherent identity more complicated Even artists who remain rooted in one place are shaped by interchange with people, ideas, images, and products from elsewhere (Robertson & McDaniel, 2012, p.58).

Sculptor Do Ho Suh’s installations are representative examples of how themes of identity and place intersect Born in Korea, Suh studied art in Korea and the United States, and works across NewYork and Seoul. He explores the concept of space, time, and home across the borders using various media To an extent, the displacement that Suh experiences every time he changes locations hinders a stable sense of identity Hence, this essay explores the meaning of home through the lenses of globalism and negotiating canon.

Fig.1 Home Within Home Within Home Within Home Within Home (Do Ho Suh, 2013)

GLOBALISMAND THEAPPEARANCE OF NEW NOMADS

People have begun to imagine themselves as a global community through trade and information networks In a crisis of industrialisation altering the world’s climate, people are just beginning to grasp the connection between a flood of cars on a California freeway and the literal floods crashing through homes in Bangladesh (Christensen, 2008) Hence, people realise the importance of home and space. However, displacement in the retrospective is not limited to the climate refugees. People are often displaced due to forced migration, modern slavery, and economic and war refugees

Displacement also applies to many people living in the era of globalism People keep moving around the houses, transferring and trying to adapt to completely different geological locations and cultures with developed transportation Hybridity, a blending or fusion of cultural influences, is endemic to being anAmerican. Nearly every United States resident has ancestors who were voluntary or involuntary immigrants (Malik & Gavin, 1998) To modern people, life is perhaps not just a bunch of consecutive spaces (homes) but constant displacement These people can be considered New Nomads

Do Ho Suh’s Almost Home (Suh, 2018) is his personal history of migration that has led to the desire to capture his past and forge a connection between the places he has left and the life he leads today (Showalter, 2018) Suh said, “These are architectural pieces that are not designated with any particular function They are in-between spaces, like from the bedroom to the kitchen You can call it a corridor maybe, but a Hub looks like a room.” Ranging in colour from red and pink (NewYork) to green (Berlin) to blue (Seoul), the fragile sheets in this organza-like passageway resemble transparent, life-size walls (King, 2018) Suh’s sculptures have no hard walls He makes sculptures out of a translucent material typically used in Korean summer wear This flexible material can be folded and unfolded whenever necessary.

In a sense, Suh’s artwork is like a suitcase So lightweight and portable, they can be carried and installed worldwide and transformed depending on the place and space This characteristic perfectly fits New Nomads who constantly move around and take on their lives.

Fig.2 Outside view of installation Almost Home (Do Ho Suh, 2018)

Fig.3 Inside view of installation Almost Home (Do Ho Suh, 2018)

NEW NOMADS NEGOTIATING CANON

New Nomads face an identity crisis because of Globalism. Home is always tightly connected to one’s identity Due to this continuous displacement of home, identity is influenced, and it is tough to have a stable personal representation WalterAnderson explores identity shifts: “a post-modern person is a multi-community person, and his or her life as a social being is based on adjusting to shifting contexts and being true to divergent and occasionally conflicting commitments” (1995, p 128) Post-modern people are part of the multi-community, making it difficult to express themselves through communal identity due to their intersectional experiences Identity can be considered fluid, depending on the situation a person is put into, based on which it can be transformed or abandoned According to a contemporary theorist, a person can be considered as “performing” (Robertson & McDanie, 2012, p 54) based on the version of their identity they choose to show in different contexts

“Awareness of diversity contrasts strongly with essentialism” (Robertson & McDaniel, 2012, p 46) In today's world, people seek variance more than parallelism These groups tend to be smaller based on individuals who may identify with different groups in multiple situations Moreover, if interested in diversity, one can recognise internal differences within their community.This helps one recognise their sole traits, which guides them to a path where they can fight against the existing canons about groups of distinct individuals and establish their own identity, which is why, when western writers talk about identity, they refer to it as ones shifting identity along with their social and cultural presences (Robertson & McDaniel, 2012)

Hybridity is “a state of being, arrived at through the innovative mixing and borrowing of ideas, languages, and modes of practice”(Robertson & McDaniel, 2012, p.48). It is the blending and synthesis of different cultures that come together voluntarily or as is the outcome of forced migration Agood example of forced hybridity is the imposition of one culture on another during colonisation. Such communities are often subjected to facing several western canons or stereotypes set by the western society to establish their own identity. Each individual represents their community and has to cross these obstacles to prove their distinctiveness

Fig.4 2011 exhibition of Fallen Star ⅕ (Do Ho Suh, 2008-2009)

Fig.5 2008 exhibition of Fallen Star ⅕ (Do Ho Suh, 2008-2009)

Do Ho Suh’s exhibition always presented the rare opportunity of physically seeing the homes of NewYork, Seoul, and Berlin (Leeum, 2012) In his work Fallen Star ⅕ (Suh, 2008 & 2011), Suh exhibited a clash of spaces he had been through, where he constructed a collision of a traditional Korean house (Hanok) and a 19th-centuryAmerican mansion at a one-fifth scale These two buildings were smashed together and then split in half, where he filled the ground floor with debris (Muchnic, 2009)This artwork demonstrated the battle between opposing cultures that the New Nomads try to survive to fit in this alien life created with set boundaries and stereotypes.The artist’s work showcases the difference between the social structure and culture while comparing the eastern and western architectural styles, highlighting the gap between them

Living in New England, Suh intuitively perceived the vast differences between the 18th-century western-style architecture he found himself in and Hanok he had grown up in In Hanok, a comparatively higher percentage of the surface is taken up by windows and doors than walls These windows and doors covered with rice paper let light inside and help one hear, feel, and see changes in nature from inside the house, thus blurring the border between inside and outside On the contrary, the western-style house built with thick walls creates an architectural situation in which the interior and the exterior are separated, and living with nature is hardly possible (Leeum, 2012) By portraying the clash of the western, modern apartment and eastern, natural house, Suh successfully challenges the western canon based on his experience and identity

SEARCHING FOR HOME

What details make a “home”? Is home based on people, places, or objects? Or is it a feeling of belonging somewhere? Perhaps it can be considered a combination of them all.

Fig.6 Outside view of New York City apartment installation 348 West 22nd Street (Do Ho Su, 2016)

Fig.7 Inside view of 348 West 22nd Street (Do Ho Su, 2016)

Fig.8 Magnified Door Handle of 348 West 22nd Street (Do Ho Su, 2016)

Fig.9 Home within Home (Do Ho Su, 2019)

Fig.10 Side View of installation Home Within Home Within Home Within Home Within Home (Do Ho Suh, 2013)

In Suh's textile installations, he created replicas of his previous houses. To understand and highlight the meaning of “home”, he covered every inch of the interior with paper, rubbed it with blue charcoal, and created the textile sculpture with precision (Art21, 2022). As a result, all the houses in Hanok were suspended in the air (Suh, 2019), and the ones in New York were on the ground (Suh, 2016).

He explained that houses floating in the air represent memories, and maybe as time passes, all the houses will become a memory of once being home for him. This establishes that home is not just a building made of walls but the memories, feelings and experiences one carries, which make a place home. So even if the building fades, the memory remains intact. This idea of home is where one feels one belongs, helping to stabilise the identity of an immigrant in a foreign space. It becomes much easier for people to find and accept themselves when they feel they belong.

This artwork installs one’s “personal space” (home) in a “public space” (exhibition) and allows strangers in. In a way, this installation reminds the audience of the identity crisis New Nomads are going through due to displacements.

CONCLUSION

Suh constantly presented the construction of a building for a specific location, as well as the work of moving the personal memories permeated in the building to another space. It was an expression of one’s life, but it also revealed the identity of modern people who were nomadic and globalised. Moreover, it further suggested the direction in which people should move forward: collecting the memories and carrying them wherever they go. Searching for the meaning of home is not just finding a place to stay. It gives answers to the questions: “How will an individual try to find and stabilise their identity in this modern society?”, “Where do they belong in this constantly changing globalised era?”

To conclude this essay with Do Ho Suh’s interview, he said, “The common misunderstanding is that my work is a confrontation, a clash of cultures. It’s not really about that. It’s more about interdependency and the way things coexist. That’s what I’m interested in: how to survive and blend in. It’s an ongoing process.” (Muchnic, 2009)

When you find somewhere you love and belong, A House becomes your Home.

Bibliography:

Anderson, W. (1995) The Truth about the Truth: De-confusing and Re-constructing the Postmodern World NewYork: Putnam

Art21 (2022) Do Ho Suh Available at: https://art21 org/artist/do-ho-suh/ (Accessed: 8 Jun 2022)

Art21 (2022) What details make a home? Available at: https://art21 org/read/conversation-starter-what-details-make-a-home/ (Accessed: 8 Jun 2022)

Belcove, J (2013) ‘Artist Do Ho Suh Explores the Meaning of Home’, The Wall Street Journal

Available at: https://wwwwsj com/articles/SB10001424052702303376904579137672335638830 (Accessed: 16 Jun 2022)

Christensen, L (2008) ‘Writing Home in a GlobalAge’, World Literature Today, 82(4), pp 16–20 Available at: http://wwwjstororg/stable/20621289 (Accessed: 10 Jun 2022)

King, E. (2018) ‘Do Ho Suh: Almost Home’ at Washington, D.C.’s Smithsonian American Art Museum

Available at: https://www.lehmannmaupin.com/news/do-ho-suh-almost-home-at-washington-d-c-s-smithsonianamerican-art-museum (Accessed: 8 Jun 2022)

Leeum (2012) Home Within Home Seoul: Leeum, Samsung Museum ofArt

Lehmann Maupin (No date) Do Ho Suh

Available at: https://wwwlehmannmaupin com/artists/do-ho-suh/biography (Accessed: 8 Jun 2022)

Malik, R and Jantjes, G. (1998) A Fruitful Incoherence: Dialogues with Artists on Internationalism. London: Institute of International VisualArts, S V “hybridity”

Muchnic, S. (2009) ‘Do Ho Suh at LACMA: ‘Fallen Star 1/5’portrays a house divided’, Los Angeles Times Available at: https://wwwlatimes com/entertainment/arts/la-et-do-ho-suh24-2009jun24-storyhtml (Accessed: 10 May 2022)

Robertson, J and McDaniel, C (2012) Themes of Contemporary Art: Visual Art After 1980 2nd Edition NewYork: Oxford University Press

Showalter,A (2018) A Suitcase Home: Sarah Newman on Do Ho Suh Available at: https://americanart si edu/blog/eye-level/2018/10/57586/suitcase-home-sarah-newman-do-ho-suh (Accessed: 10 Jun 2022)

SmithsonianAmericanArt Museum (2018) Do Ho Suh: Almost Home

Available at: https://americanart si edu/exhibitions/suh (Accessed: 10 Jun 2022)

Sollins, S. (2003) Art 21: Art in the Twenty-First Century 2. NewYork: Harry N.Abrams

The ContemporaryAustin (No date) Do Ho Suh Available at: https://thecontemporaryaustin.org/artists/do-ho-suh/ (Accessed: 10 May 2022)

Image References:

Fig.1 Suh, D. (2013) Home Within Home Within Home Within Home Within Home. [Installation]. National Museum of Modern and ContemporaryArt (MMCA), Seoul Available at: https://mymodernmet com/do-ho-suh-home-within-home-new/ (Accessed: 15 Jun 2022)

Fig 2 Suh, D (2018) Almost Home [Installation] SmithsonianAmericanArt Museum, Washington, D.C. https://americanart.si.edu Available at: https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/suh (Accessed: 10 Jun 2022)

Fig.3 Suh, D. (2018) Almost Home. [Installation]. SmithsonianAmericanArt Museum, Washington, D C https://americanart si edu Available at: https://americanart si edu/exhibitions/suh (Accessed: 10 Jun 2022)

Fig.4 Suh, D. (20008-2009) Fallen Star ⅕. [Mixed Media]. Lehmann Maupin Gallery, NewYork. https://mymodernmet com/do-ho-suh-home-within-home/ (Accessed: 10 Jun 2022)

Fig.5 Suh, D. (2008-2009) Fallen Star ⅕. [Mixed Media]. Hayward Gallery, London. Available at: https://www.lehmannmaupin.com/artists/do-ho-suh/featured-works?view=slider (Accessed: 8 Jun 2022)

Fig 6 Suh, D (2016) 348 West 22nd Street [Installation] LosAngeles County Museum ofArt (LACMA), LosAngeles Available at: https://wwwdomusweb it/en/news/gallery/2019/11/11/do-ho-suh-a-new-york-apartment-entirely-ma de-of-fabric.html (Accessed: 15 Jun 2022)

Fig 7 Suh, D (2016) 348 West 22nd Street [Installation] LosAngeles County Museum ofArt (LACMA), LosAngeles.Available at: https://wwwdomusweb it/en/news/gallery/2019/11/11/do-ho-suh-a-new-york-apartment-entirely-ma de-of-fabric html (Accessed: 15 Jun 2022)

Fig.8 Suh, D. (2016) 348 West 22nd Street. [Installation]. LosAngeles County Museum ofArt (LACMA), LosAngeles Available at: https://wwwdomusweb it/en/news/gallery/2019/11/11/do-ho-suh-a-new-york-apartment-entirely-ma de-of-fabric html (Accessed: 15 Jun 2022)

Fig 9 Suh, D (2019) Home within Home [Installation] Incheon International Airport, South Korea, in collaboration with Hyundai LIVART [online] Available at: https://thespaces com/do-ho-suh-floats-his-fabric-houses-inside-seouls-incheon-international-airp ort/ (Accessed: 15 Jun 2022)

Fig 10 Suh, D (2013) Home Within Home Within Home Within Home Within Home [Installation] National Museum of Modern and ContemporaryArt (MMCA), Seoul. [online]Available at: https://mymodernmet com/do-ho-suh-home-within-home-new/ (Accessed: 15 Jun 2022)

Visual Essay

Fig 1 Kim,A (2021) London Tube [Water colour on paper] London

Fig.2 Mondrian, P. (1942-43) Broadway Boogie Woogie. [Oil on canvas]. Museum of ModernArt, NewYork

Available at: https://wwwmoma org/collection/works/78682 (Accessed: 16 Jun 2022)

Fig 3 Suh, D (2010) Staircase-III [Installation] Lehmann Maupin Gallery, NewYork

Available at: https://wwwtate org uk/art/artists/do-ho-suh-12799 (Accessed: 15 Jun 2022)

Fig.4 Grosse, K. (2016) Rockaway!. [Installation]. FortTilden, NewYork.Available at: https://wwwfriendsoffriends com/features/katharina-grosse-blasts-an-abandoned-house-with-fuchsi a-paint-in-rememberance/ (Accessed: 16 Jun 2022)

Fig.5 Kim,A. (2021) At the End of the Day. [Photograph]. London.

Fig 6 Kim,A (2021) Untitled [Photograph] London

Fig 7 Kim,A (2021) Untitled [Photograph] London

Fig 8 Kim,A (2021) Desolate [Photograph] London

Fig 9 Chagall, M (1918) Over the Town [Oil on canvas] Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow Available at: https://wwwchagallpaintings com/over-the-town/ (Accessed: 14 Jun 2022)

Fig.10 Ernst, M. (1924) Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale. [Mixed Media]. Museum of ModernArt, NewYork Available at: https://wwwmaxernst org/two-children-are-threatened-by-a-nightingale/ (Accessed: 14 Jun 2022)

Fig 11 Gogh, V (1888) The yellow house (‘The street’) [Oil on canvas] Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam Available at: https://artsandculture google com/asset/the-yellow-house-the-street/4gEx EL470OSUw?hl=en-GB (Accessed: 14 Jun 2022)

Fig 12 Gauguin, P (1892) Dog in Front of the Hut, Tahiti [Oil on canvas] Pola Museum, Hakone, Kanagawa.

Available at: https://wwwpolamuseum orjp/en/about/ (Accessed at: 14 Jun 2022)

Fig 13 Matta-Clark, G (1974) Splitting [Photograph] Humphrey Street, Englewood [online] Available at: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/187171/splitting (Accessed at: 15 Jun 2022)

Fig 14 Matta-Clark, G (1974) Splitting [Photograph] Humphrey Street, Englewood Available at: https://wwwartic edu/artworks/187171/splitting (Accessed at: 15 Jun 2022)

Fig 15 Suh, D (2008-2009) Fallen Star ⅕ [Mixed Media] Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul

Fig.16 Suh, D. (2008-2009) Fallen Star ⅕. [Mixed Media]. Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul.

Fig 17 Suh, D (2011) Fallen Star [Water colour and coloured pencil on paper] Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul

Fig 18 Suh, D (2019) Intercoms, London Home & Studio, New York Home, Studio & Corridor, Berlin Home, and Providence Home; Lighting Fixtures, New York Studio & Corridors, Seoul Home, Berlin Home, Providence Home; Fuse Boxes, London Studio, New York Home, Studio & Corridor [Polyester Fabric] Lehmann Maupin Gallery, NewYork Available at: https://www.lehmannmaupin.com/artists/do-ho-suh/featured-works (Accessed at: 10 Jun 2022)

Fig 19 Suh, D (2002) Seoul Home/L A Home [Ink on paper] Leeum, Samsung Museum ofArt, Seoul

Fig 20 Zarina (1999) Home Is a Foreign Place [Portfolio] Museum of ModernArt, NewYork Available at: https://wwwmoma org/collection/works/132514 (Accessed at: 16 Jun 2022)

Fig.21 Whiteread, R. (1990) Ghost. [Installation]. National Gallery ofArt, Washington. [online] Available at: https://wwwartsynet/article/artsy-editorial-rachel-whitereads-house-unlivable-controversial-unforge ttable (Accessed at: 16 Jun 2022)