Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) presents a solo exhibition “Ua a‘o ‘ia ‘o ia e ia 우아 아오 이아 오 이아 에 이아” by Sung Hwan Kim, as its last exhibition of 2024, until March 30. This exhibition marks the first large-scale solo exhibition at a national public museum in Korea for Sung Hwan Kim (b. 1975), an artist internationally active and based in Hawaii and New York.

Kim has presented works that explore the relationship between social structures and the memories, histories, and psychological traces embedded within them, drawing from diverse disciplines such as architecture, film, music, and literature. This exhibition delves deeply into the artist's oeuvre, focusing on his ongoing multi-disciplinary series A Record of Drifting Across the Sea (2017~), while showcasing new works spanning design, two-dimensional art, installations, and video.

A Record of Drifting Across the Sea (2017~) begins with the stories of Korean immigrants who, in the early 20th century, traveled from the former Joseon Dynasty through Hawaii to the United States. By weaving the narratives of many early immigrants who crossed the Pacific, the project investigates the relationship between institutions and knowledge through topics such as boundaries, traditions, records, ownership, and circulation. This exhibition, held at the SeMA, represents the third chapter of A Record of Drifting Across the Sea.

The exhibition title, "Ua a‘o ‘ia ‘o ia e ia 우아 아오 이아 오 이아 에 이아," combines Hawaiian and Korean phonetic notation, encapsulating both the significance of Hawaii as the central setting of the works and the artist's approach to engaging with the subject of knowledge. In the exhibition, Hawaii serves not only as a concrete geographical site tied to modernity and colonialism but also as a conceptual framework for examining the relationship between institutions and knowledge.

Hawaii is portrayed as a connector of people across generations, genders, nationalities, and races, transcending its physical location to become a conceptual space that bridges past and present, diverse cultures, and boundaries. It challenges existing knowledge systems and provides an experimental ground for new ways of thinking and perceiving.

This exhibition introduces a novel curatorial approach. Through an evolving composition over the exhibition period, it focuses on the relationship between the body and information in the formation of knowledge. The gallery space (Room 2), functioning as the artist's editing room and studio, transforms viewers from mere spectators of completed scenes into witnesses of the process through which an individual’s (the artist's) thoughts take shape as knowledge (the artwork). Simultaneously, viewers become active participants in the production of knowledge.

“Ua a‘o ‘ia ‘o ia e ia 우아 아오 이아 오 이아 에 이아”
2024.12.19 - 2025.03.30
Tue-Fri 10:00 am - 8:00 pm / Sat-Sun 10:00 am – 7:00 pm
Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA), Seosomun Main Branch
61, Deoksugung-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul, Korea

Ji Yeon Lee has been working as an editor for the media art and culture channel AliceOn since 2021 and worked as an exhibition coordinator at samuso (now Space for Contemporary Art) from 2021 to 2023.