The Tate Modern has unveiled a survey of Do Ho Suh’s practice, marking his first major solo exhibition in London in over 20 years. Spanning three decades of work across Seoul, New York, and London—the cities he has called home—the exhibition immerses visitors in large-scale installations, delicate sculptures, evocative drawings, and meditative video works. At its core, Suh’s art interrogates the fluidity of home, the persistence of memory, and how we navigate identity across shifting geographies.
The exhibition’s title, Walk the House, draws from a Korean expression tied to the traditional hanok—a structure designed to be disassembled, moved, and rebuilt elsewhere. This concept of a mobile dwelling resonates throughout Suh’s work, where architecture becomes a vessel for personal and collective histories. “The space I’m interested in is not only a physical one,” Suh reflects, “but an intangible, metaphorical, and psychological one. For me, ‘space’ encompasses everything.”
Visitors are invited to step inside Suh’s ethereal fabric reconstructions—translucent, life-sized replicas of domestic spaces he has inhabited. Among these is the striking new installation *Nest/s 2024*, a labyrinthine weaving of rooms and corridors from Seoul, New York, London, and Berlin, merging into a single, impossible structure. Equally compelling is Perfect Home: London, Horsham, New York, Berlin, Providence, Seoul 2024, where the contours of his current London residence are stitched with architectural fragments from past homes—doorknobs, light switches, sockets—each carrying the weight of lived experience.
Suh’s Rubbing/Loving series transforms the act of tracing architectural surfaces into a meditation on memory and loss. *Rubbing/Loving: Seoul Home 2013-22* captures the imprints of his childhood residence, while *Rubbing/Loving: Company Housing of Gwangju Theater 2012* engages with the scars of the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, questioning what histories buildings silently hold. Nearby, Who Are We? 2000—avast wallpaper of miniature portraits—challenges perceptions of individuality and collective identity, a theme Suh has revisited throughout his career.
The exhibition also highlights Suh’s works on paper, where impermanence and interconnectedness emerge through delicate thread drawings and gelatin-tissue transfers. His video works, Robin Hood Gardens 2018 and Dong In Apartments 2022, document soon-to-be-demolished housing blocks in London and Daegu, blurring the line between structure and memory. Advanced techniques—photogrammetry 3D printing—further dissolve boundaries between past and present, as seen in Home Within Home 2025, where two of Suh’s former dwellings merge into one.
The exhibition culminates with the Bridge Project, an ongoing interrogation of the myth of a “perfect home.” Collaborating with architects, engineers, and anthropologists, Suh probes how imagined spaces collide with real-world social and ecological tensions.
Born in Seoul in 1962, Do Ho Suh trained in traditional Korean ink painting before shifting to sculpture and installation. His work has been exhibited globally, from the Venice Biennale to the Gwangju Biennale, and resides in major collections, including LACMA, the V&A, and the Smithsonian. This Tate Modern retrospective reaffirms his place as a vital voice in contemporary art that speaks to the fragility of belonging in an ever-shifting world.
Top Photo: Sara Faith © Artlyst 2025
Do Ho Suh: Walk the House runs at Tate Modern until 19th October