096 DO HO SUH
associated with love. ‘Te gesture of rubbing is basically very caring,’ he has explained. ‘There were multiple levels of emotion I went through during the process. A lot of memories had been accumulated within the space, and a lot of marks had been made there. Some I remembered before I started to do the rubbing, but some I completely forgot and I rediscovered them as I rubbed.’ For the large-scale installation Rubbing/
Loving, 2016, Suh memorialised the interior of the New York apartment on West 22nd Street where he had resided for 18 years. As before, the process began with covering every surface with paper, including the cabinets, light switches and doorknobs but this time he used coloured pencil and pastel to create his rubbings. ‘Tis project didn’t become possible until I had to vacate the space,’ Suh recalled. ‘When my landlord passed away, the building was sold and I had to move out. I decided that the last piece I would make in the space would be a rubbing of all the interiors in the entire building.’ Suh spent
two years on the project, meticulously rubbing and caressing every surface with his fingertips. In doing so, he indexed every scratch, dent and imperfection – the accumulated vestiges of a human presence. Just as Seoul Home became a poignant memorial to the artist’s father, the process of making this work became ‘an extended ritual’ to commemorate his time in the house and his warm friendship with his former landlord, Arthur. At their core, these Rubbing/Loving projects speak to the transient nature of home, memory and the emotional imprints we leave behind in the spaces we inhabit. Among Suh’s smaller pieces on display
at Tate Modern are his Tread Drawings, works on paper made using threads stitched into soluble gelatin tissue. These are sewn in the same way as his architectural fabric sculptures and feature a similarly vibrant colour palette. But once immersed in water, the gelatin dissolves and the threads fuse with the handmade paper, leaving skeletal
images of architectural facades, staircases light switches, fire extinguishers and other motifs familiar from the artist’s large-scale works. Suh developed the process during a residency at Singapore Tyler Print Institute in 2010, creating pictures that lie somewhere between two and three dimensions. Staircase, Ground Floor, 348 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011, USA, 2016, takes the form of a red staircase yet at the same time appears like a discarded negligee. Drawing out connections between architectural space, clothing and the body, such works underscore Suh’s fascination with the interconnected spaces we inhabit and their relationship to identity formation. In contrast, other, cartoon-like drawings, such as My Homes, 2010, anthologises an array of zany and humorous concepts: a house that runs on legs or that radiates out of the artist’s head, or lies balanced on his shoulders. More recently, Suh has begun using video
to explore his themes, most notably in the 2018 installation Robin Hood Gardens, which
Right The pieces on show at Tate Modern ask profound questions about the nature of home and what it means to belong
Right below Robin Hood Gardens documents the interiors and exteriors of the condemned Robin Hood Gardens housing estate in Poplar, east London.
With issues of migration and displacement… at the forefront of current affairs, Suh’s drawings, sculptures and videos seem more relevant than ever
PHOTO: GAUTIER DEBLONDE
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