Do Ho Suh
Made at the STPI Creative Workshop in Singapore, the new works in this exhibition are part of the artist’s ongoing Rubbing/Loving project, in which rubbings of interior spaces and everyday objects are created in a process that discloses and memorialises details of the artist’s surroundings.
Do Ho Suh has visited the STPI Creative Workshop several times a year over the past ten years. He is the first artist to be invited more than once to this internationally renowned resource for artists working with print and paper, and a long-term collaboration with the workshop has been instrumental in the development of his groundbreaking, large-scale thread drawings.
Focusing on objects, fixtures and fittings attached to the walls, the works in this exhibition attest to Suh’s close relationship with STPI and commemorate his time there. Light switches, door knobs, a telephone, a tap, a hairdryer hanging from a hook… created by lining objects with paper and rubbing the surface with coloured pastels, the works on display lend a quiet poetry to the quotidian while laying bare the processes, rational yet sensual, that enable the artist to determine and connect with his surroundings. Reconstructed in three dimensions, the completed works exist at the boundary of drawing and sculpture.
Touch and its repetition is a key aspect of Suh’s Rubbing/Loving works. Suh has often drawn parallels between architectural space and the body, and in these works the paper functions as an epidermis – a second or surrogate skin – that bears the impression of his own touch: pastel, applied with the fingertips in a gesture the artist describes as a ‘caress’.
For Suh, these rubbing works function as symbols of memory, and in them he documents the accumulation of time and preserves his experience of living and working within spaces of special significance. They encapsulate wider ideas in his art about home and belonging, malleable space and memory, and the boundaries of identity within a shared realm, referring to Suh’s fruitful time at STPI as well as that of the many international artists who have worked there. Contained within the works, too, are further ideas of connection, transition, movement and flow, not confined to but especially evocative in the pipework and other conduits he brings to light, ideas that acquire special resonance in the historic city of Venice.
Also in Venice: a new film by Do Ho Suh, commissioned by the V&A.
La Biennale di Venezia and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, present Robin Hood Gardens: A Ruin in Reverse, curated by Christopher Turner and Olivia Horsfall Turner, a special project at the Applied Arts Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2018, 26 May–25 November 2018.
Robin Hood Gardens: A Ruin in Reverse, centres around concrete fragments of Robin Hood Gardens that will be transported to Venice from Poplar, East London. These concrete fragments come from the internationally recognised housing estate by Alison and Peter Smithson, which is in the process of being demolished. In 2017, when destruction was imminent, the V&A salvaged a three-storey section of each façade and the original interior fittings of two flats.
Made in response to the architecture and interiors of Robin Hood Gardens before its demolition, Suh’s panoramic film, Robin Hood Gardens, Woolmore Street, London E14 0HG, 2018, is both site-specific and time-specific – a document of the Smithson’s modular interiors as they have been adapted, decorated and furnished by residents, as well as a wider meditation about home, memory and displacement within a physical structure that is about to disappear. Given access to four flats, three of which were still occupied, Suh has used time-lapse photography, drone footage, 3D-scanning and photogrammetry to create a visual journey in which the camera pans vertically and horizontally through the building, moving seamlessly from one space to another. The film’s steady, contemplative pace and constant, frontal viewpoint function as a framework within which the myriad details that denote differences of taste, style, culture or circumstance from flat to flat are revealed. Its sustained motion accentuates the feeling of transition experienced by the residents and heightens a sense of imminence, of a building on the verge of demolition, less than fifty years after the architects’ utopian vision was realised.
Additionally, work by Do Ho Suh will feature in Architectural Ethnography from Tokyo: Guidebooks and Projects on Livelihood, curated by Momoyo Kaijima, the Japan Pavilion Exhibition at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.
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On view at Tate Modern – The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House
May 1 2025On view 1 May–26 October 2025, this major survey exhibition explores the breadth and depth of Suh’s inventive and unique practice over the last three decades, including new and site-specific works on display for the first time.Read More -
Reviews for Do Ho Suh: Walk the House at Tate Modern
April 29 2025★★★★ from The Times, The Telegraph and The Standard: 'His yearning, spectral installations, addressing memory, are both formally ingenious and emotionally affecting.'Read More
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Do Ho Suh talks to The Observer ahead of Tate Modern exhibition, Walk the House
April 13 2025'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.'Read More -
Do Ho Suh is interviewed by ArtReview
September 4 2024The artist reflects on the ideas and processes that feature in Speculations, on view at Art Sonje Center until 3 November 2024.Read More
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Do Ho Suh talks to the Financial Times
August 29 2024The artist imagines a bridge between the US, UK and South Korea in his current exhibition, Speculations, at Art Sonje Center in Seoul.Read More -
Do Ho Suh: Speculations at Art Sonje Center, Seoul
July 24 2024On view 17 August–3 November 2024, the exhibition provides an overview of the Speculations series, which the artist has been working on since 2005.Read More
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Do Ho Suh: In Process at Moody Center for the Arts
July 17 2024The first presentation of its kind by Do Ho Suh (on view 6 September–21 December 2024) forgoes the formalities of a traditional exhibition in favor...Read More -
Laura Cumming reviews Do Ho Suh: Tracing Time
March 10 2024★★★★★ Do Ho Suh: Tracing Time review – an extraordinarily beautiful search for home A man runs along the bottom of a drawing, trailing hundreds...Read More
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Do Ho Suh talks to The Art Newspaper about his major exhibition Tracing Time at National Galleries of Scotland
February 21 2024 Read More -
Do Ho Suh: Tracing Time at National Galleries of Scotland
February 15 2024This expansive exhibition (17 February–1 September 2024) explores the foundational role that drawing and paper play in Do Ho Suh’s artistic practice, focusing on his...Read More
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Do Ho Suh talks to KoozArch
February 10 2023Working across a multiplicity of media, Do Ho Suh is constantly testing the possibilities of scale, materiality, and identity. Interested in the interactions between body...Read More -
Do Ho Suh creates a new pocket Tube map cover
November 4 2022The London-based artist has created an embroidered facsimile of the iconic Tube map design focusing on the routes that he habitually uses around his home...Read More
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Do Ho Suh at MCA Australia
November 4 2022Spanning three decades, from the 1990s to now, the exhibition (opens 4 November 2022) presents emblematic works across a wide range of media that include...Read More -
Do Ho Suh at Kistefos Museum
April 30 2022The exhibition (30 April–21 August 2022) comprises a lifesize installation of the artist's colourful hub series together with film and large-scale wall-works. Inspired by his...Read More
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Do Ho Suh: Proposal for Sach'ŏnwang-sa. at London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE
July 28 2021Inspired by the resonance between the Roman Temple of Mithras and an ancient Korean Temple, the new commission (on view 28 July 2021–22 January 2022)...Read More -
Apollo Magazine: In the studio with… Do Ho Suh
July 12 2021The Korean-born artist Do Ho Suh is best known for the fabric reconstructions of his former homes that he has been making since the late...Read More
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Portable Sculpture featuring Do Ho Suh at Henry Moore Institute
May 18 2021This major exhibition (18 May–29 August 2021) brings together fifteen artists, with work from 1934 to the present day on display. Several works are being...Read More -
As reported in The New York Times, Seattle Asian Art Museum reopens, featuring an installation by Do Ho Suh
February 6 2020Reopening on 8 February 2020, the newly renovated and expanded Asian Art Museum offers a thematic exploration of art from the world’s largest continent. The...Read More
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Paul Laster profiles Do Ho Suh for Whitehot Magazine
November 11 2019When Do Ho Suh broke onto the New York art scene in the late-1990s, you could tell a star was born. A graduate of Seoul...Read More -
Do Ho Suh: 348 West 22nd Street at LACMA
October 16 2019On view from 10 November 2019 Do Ho Suh’s works elicit a physical manifestation of memory, exploring ideas of personal history, cultural tradition, and belief...Read More
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Wangechi Mutu and Do Ho Suh feature in Ruby City’s inaugural exhibition Waking Dream
October 7 2019Waking Dream comprises significant works by Do Ho Suh, Leonardo Drew, Teresita Fernández, Wangechi Mutu and Cornelia Parker, as well as works by a number...Read More -
Do Ho Suh and Stephen Willats feature in the Chicago Architecture Biennial
September 17 2019Titled …and other such stories , the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial (19 September 2019–5 January 2020) traces dialogues between various practices and the questions they...Read More
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Do Ho Suh: Robin Hood Gardens at the V&A
August 22 2019On view 7 September–13 October 2019. In 2017, demolition began of Robin Hood Gardens, the Brutalist housing estate in Poplar, East London, completed in 1972...Read More -
Do Ho Suh at Museum Voorlinden
May 17 2019An exhibition (18 May–22 September 2019) of drawings, sculptures, video work and installations continuing the artist's exploration of how we relate to where we live...Read More
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Do Ho Suh: Almost Home was the most visited contemporary exhibition of 2018
March 24 2019The exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (16 March-5 August 2018) drew an average of 7,853 visitors a day. Read more Image: Installation shot...Read More -
Do Ho Suh: Spotlight Talk at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
December 5 2018In this Spotlight Talk, (25 January 2019) Suh discusses his sculptural practice, with special focus on the work Some/One , installed in the museum’s Contemporary...Read More
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The Art Newspaper reports that Do Ho Suh’s Bridging Home, London will remain on view until March 2020
November 11 2018By Gareth Harris Korean artist Do Ho Suh’s replica of a Korean house and surrounding bamboo garden (Bridging Home, London), installed on a footbridge at...Read More -
Do Ho Suh – Corridor at ARoS, Denmark
November 10 2018An installation (10 November 2018–17 February 2019) of Do Ho Suh's Hub works. Inspired by his peripatetic life, Do Ho Suh has long ruminated on...Read More
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Do Ho Suh: The Perfect Home II at Brooklyn Museum
October 12 2018A display (12 October 2018–27 January 2019) as part of Brooklyn Museum's One series, of Suh's 2003 work The Perfect Home II. The Perfect Home...Read More -
Do Ho Suh: Specimens at Frist Art Museum
October 12 2018The centrepiece of this exhibition (12 October 2018–6 January 2019) will be the artist's Specimen Series , which explores details of Suh’s domestic existence such...Read More
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Frieze writes about Do Ho Suh: Bridging Home, London
October 10 2018How Artists Reveal the Emotion Hidden in Our Cities. By Alice Bucknell When was the last time you cried over a table, or experienced an...Read More -
Do Ho Suh: Bridging Home, London
September 21 2018Do Ho Suh's new installation at Wormwood Street, EC2, commissioned by Art Night and Sculpture in the City, is on view until 2020. Bridging Home,...Read More
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Do Ho Suh: Passage/s at Towada Art Center
June 2 2018An exhibition (2 June – 14 October 2018) featuring an installation Suh's Hub works, along with the video My Home/s, 2014-2016. Inspired by his peripatetic...Read More -
Wallpaper* writes about Do Ho Suh in Venice
May 30 2018The South Korean artist Do Ho Suh, is a perfect complement to ‘Freespace’, the theme of the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. His fascination with rendering...Read More
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Do Ho Suh in Venice
May 21 2018Exhibitions and projects during the 16th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia: a new film by, commissioned by the V&A; work featured in Architectural...Read More -
Do Ho Suh talks to the FT about his new film, commissioned by the V&A
May 11 2018Do Ho Suh in Venice: the lives of others. By Rachel Spence 'The house we were born in is more than an embodiment of home,...Read More
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Do Ho Suh: The Spaces in Between at Cantor Arts Center
May 10 2018For this exhibition (10 May 2018–25 Feb 2019) Do Ho Suh has created a chandelier, wallpaper, and a decorative screen to focus attention on issues...Read More -
Do Ho Suh: Almost Home at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
March 16 201816 March – 5 August 2018 Do Ho Suh’s immersive, dreamlike work explores the nature and meaning of home, fastening ties between personal space and...Read More