Renowned Korean contemporary artist Yeesookyung’s new work You Were There_Cheonggyecheon 2025 has been installed at Cheonggye Plaza to mark the 20th anniversary of the Cheonggyecheon restoration.
 
The installation is part of the “2025 Cheonggyecheon Public Art Project,” led by the Seoul Metropolitan Government to commemorate the restoration milestone. The project features both established and emerging artists from Korea and abroad, presenting public artworks that connect the past and present of Cheonggyecheon in a new era.
 
The 2025 Cheonggyecheon Public Art Project, themed “Coexistence,” explores the multilayered temporality and relational networks inherent in the Cheonggyecheon space. The stream has historically functioned as a site where tradition and modernity, human and non-human, and urban and natural elements intersect to form complex relationships. 

Jang Suk Joon, the project’s overall director, described it as “an expansion of the concept of ‘becoming,’ proposed by Deleuze and Guattari as the continuous creation of new possibilities, into a ‘collective becoming.’ It is a proposal for publicness as a communal network that continuously forms and transforms together, beyond fixed identities.”

In line with this vision, Yeesookyung’s new work You Were There_Cheonggyecheon 2025 features a sculptural form inspired by the Ttukbaegi Rock of Bugaksan Mountain, enhanced with ceramic fragments and gold leaf, and incorporates a multisensory experience through collaboration with musicians. 

The sculpture reveals the temporal origins of the rock and artifacts discovered during the Cheonggyecheon restoration, allowing viewers to experience a relational coexistence of rock, ceramics, gold leaf, music, and water. This work aligns closely with contemporary public art practices that emphasize environmental, temporal, and relational experiences.

Additionally, the Seoul Metropolitan Government has installed a wooden work, KONNEXCHEON Pavillion, by OBRA Architects, allowing visitors to get closer to the previously hard-to-access masterpiece Spring by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen. From atop the pavilion, viewers can enjoy diverse perspectives of the artworks in Cheonggye Plaza.
 
Along the stretch from the entrance of Cheonggyecheon to Gwanggyo, works by four emerging artists are also on display. These innovative pieces draw on chairs that carry local memories, native plants and wild birds inhabiting Cheonggyecheon, and stones that shape the rhythm of the stream, unfolding along the waterway. 

Regarding the project, director Jang Suk Joon stated, “By reinterpreting Cheonggyecheon’s history and restoration process, it demonstrates a shift in public art from monumental symbolism to relational environmentality.” He added, “This is not merely art installed in a place, but an experimental process of a ‘coexistence space,’ where the city and nature, history and present, and citizens and art continuously intertwine.”

References

• 2025 청계천 공공미술 프로젝트 (2025 Cheonggyecheon Public Art Project)