Local, disasporic artists exhibit together to explore belief from different perspectives
[INTERVIEW]
!["sent in and spun" is on display at the Doosan Gallery in Jongno District, central Seoul, through Dec. 13. [DOOSAN GALLERY]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2025/11/01/f75acb11-8bcd-4cb7-bb7e-89e94807fd91.jpg)
Why do you believe what you believe?
A former Mormon Korean American and a Seoul-based spiritualist ask the question at Doosan Gallery’s new exhibition in Jongno District, central Seoul.
“sent in and spun,” running through Dec. 13, is part of the gallery’s ongoing series in which a Korean diasporic artist is spotlighted alongside an emerging local artist. This chapter of the series sets Brooklyn-based Korean Ginny Huo with Korea's Cha Yeonså.
Huo, an interdisciplinary artist and educator, grew up in Hawaii as the child of Mormon parents. She later turned away from the faith and now uses her art to examine inherited systems of belief and how they can be reimagined.
Cha is the daughter of the late Cha Dong-ha, a professor of Oriental Painting at Seoul National University who passed away in 2021. Using piles of colored hanji (mulberry paper) left behind by her father, she cuts and weaves them into her series titled “Festival” to explore the different belief systems that interpret what happens to human spirits postmortem.
![“Sent in and spun,” running through Dec. 13, is part of the gallery’s ongoing series in which a Korean diasporic artist is spotlighted alongside an emerging local artist. Artists Cha Yeonså, left, and Ginny Huo [DOOSAN GALLERY]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2025/11/01/9519fc3b-2ef8-4bc8-9510-6861657a6715.jpg)
The two artists share no formal connection — they are from different generations, work in different media and have never met before this exhibition. But there are still parallels between them, despite the differences.
“I think something really important to us was to find artists who might share similar interests but approach them in very different ways,” said Lumi Tan, a Brooklyn-based curator who co-organized the show with Doosan Gallery. “Often, with two-person exhibitions, it’s easy to pair artists based on similarities. But in this case, we wanted the tensions to be visible — even in the materials, like the weight and density of Ginny’s work contrasted with the fragility of Yeonså’s. Those contrasts felt essential rather than something to smooth over.”
Inside Doosan Gallery, Huo’s installations, marked by motion and structure, bring an industrial rhythm to the space — a wheeled table that moves daily, layered drawings and a video projected in the driving car's window showing a road through Laie, Hawaii, where the Mormon church once operated a sugarcane plantation. Her works speak of systems — faith, migration, labor — and how belief travels across distance, reshaped by time and memory.
![Ginny Huo's works are on display at Doosan Gallery's "sent in and spun" exhibition. [DOOSAN GALLERY]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2025/11/01/53ebf93e-6eb9-429f-8cb4-a5c53c971430.jpg)
The diaspora artist’s unique background and experiences are key drivers behind Huo’s creations.
“For me, it’s what I know — and also what I’m trying to find out more about,” Huo said in an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily on Oct. 20 at the Doosan Gallery in Jongno District, central Seoul. “My work has always been based on my own experiences, and through the art-making process, I’m figuring that out.”
Cha’s paper collages, by contrast, feel organic and handmade. Her “Festival” series, composed of hand-cut and collaged hanji left behind by her late father, started as a mourning ritual that eventually became an act of self-care.
“My relationship with my father was never that good to begin with,” she said. “When someone like that suddenly dies, it’s... different — more complicated than when a family member you were close to passes away. Because it happened so abruptly, I couldn’t quite tell if what I was feeling was anger toward him, or toward death itself or even toward how the body changes after death.”
“When I first touched that paper, I thought it felt like human skin. I use these really big shears — not the kind that go snip-snip, but ones that slice through all at once — and when I cut the paper, it felt incredibly satisfying. There was anger, and then pleasure. I think I just kept following what felt good in that moment — it was an instinctive choice.”
![Cha Yeonså's works are on display at Doosan Gallery's "sent in and spun" exhibition. [DOOSAN GALLERY]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2025/11/01/2d8ac4cb-8e7c-488f-8e4b-973ad3d803a5.jpg)
Cha also presents a new “Festival” work that pays tribute to a cat killed in a road accident. The image of a snake — its natural predator — biting its own tail and spinning in an endless loop becomes a meditation on grief and renewal. The piece was inspired by poet Kim Eun-hee’s verse “Those Cats!” which contemplates the strange coexistence of death and persistence.
The tension between the two is palpable yet presented in a measured equilibrium. Huo’s works draw on traditional belief systems, rigid yet in motion; Cha’s works reimagine faith as personal ritual, tactile and tender. Huo deconstructs the machinery of belief, while Cha sanctifies the remnants it leaves behind. But in the shared space between them, there is institutional resistance where faith is not preached — it’s studied, felt and quietly remade. The exhibition captures the essence of diaspora art: It matters not as a fixed identity, but as a motion — something sent, spun and still becoming.
BY LEE JIAN [lee.jian@joongang.co.kr]
"sent in and spun" is on display at the Doosan Gallery in Jongno District, central Seoul, through Dec. 13. [DOOSAN GALLERY]
Why do you believe what you believe?
A former Mormon Korean American and a Seoul-based spiritualist ask the question at Doosan Gallery’s new exhibition in Jongno District, central Seoul.
“sent in and spun,” running through Dec. 13, is part of the gallery’s ongoing series in which a Korean diasporic artist is spotlighted alongside an emerging local artist. This chapter of the series sets Brooklyn-based Korean Ginny Huo with Korea's Cha Yeonså.
Huo, an interdisciplinary artist and educator, grew up in Hawaii as the child of Mormon parents. She later turned away from the faith and now uses her art to examine inherited systems of belief and how they can be reimagined.
Cha is the daughter of the late Cha Dong-ha, a professor of Oriental Painting at Seoul National University who passed away in 2021. Using piles of colored hanji (mulberry paper) left behind by her father, she cuts and weaves them into her series titled “Festival” to explore the different belief systems that interpret what happens to human spirits postmortem.
“Sent in and spun,” running through Dec. 13, is part of the gallery’s ongoing series in which a Korean diasporic artist is spotlighted alongside an emerging local artist. Artists Cha Yeonså, left, and Ginny Huo [DOOSAN GALLERY]
The two artists share no formal connection — they are from different generations, work in different media and have never met before this exhibition. But there are still parallels between them, despite the differences.
“I think something really important to us was to find artists who might share similar interests but approach them in very different ways,” said Lumi Tan, a Brooklyn-based curator who co-organized the show with Doosan Gallery. “Often, with two-person exhibitions, it’s easy to pair artists based on similarities. But in this case, we wanted the tensions to be visible — even in the materials, like the weight and density of Ginny’s work contrasted with the fragility of Yeonså’s. Those contrasts felt essential rather than something to smooth over.”
Inside Doosan Gallery, Huo’s installations, marked by motion and structure, bring an industrial rhythm to the space — a wheeled table that moves daily, layered drawings and a video projected in the driving car's window showing a road through Laie, Hawaii, where the Mormon church once operated a sugarcane plantation. Her works speak of systems — faith, migration, labor — and how belief travels across distance, reshaped by time and memory.
Ginny Huo's works are on display at Doosan Gallery's "sent in and spun" exhibition. [DOOSAN GALLERY]
The diaspora artist’s unique background and experiences are key drivers behind Huo’s creations.
“For me, it’s what I know — and also what I’m trying to find out more about,” Huo said in an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily on Oct. 20 at the Doosan Gallery in Jongno District, central Seoul. “My work has always been based on my own experiences, and through the art-making process, I’m figuring that out.”
Cha’s paper collages, by contrast, feel organic and handmade. Her “Festival” series, composed of hand-cut and collaged hanji left behind by her late father, started as a mourning ritual that eventually became an act of self-care.
“My relationship with my father was never that good to begin with,” she said. “When someone like that suddenly dies, it’s... different — more complicated than when a family member you were close to passes away. Because it happened so abruptly, I couldn’t quite tell if what I was feeling was anger toward him, or toward death itself or even toward how the body changes after death.”
“When I first touched that paper, I thought it felt like human skin. I use these really big shears — not the kind that go snip-snip, but ones that slice through all at once — and when I cut the paper, it felt incredibly satisfying. There was anger, and then pleasure. I think I just kept following what felt good in that moment — it was an instinctive choice.”
Cha Yeonså's works are on display at Doosan Gallery's "sent in and spun" exhibition. [DOOSAN GALLERY]
Cha also presents a new “Festival” work that pays tribute to a cat killed in a road accident. The image of a snake — its natural predator — biting its own tail and spinning in an endless loop becomes a meditation on grief and renewal. The piece was inspired by poet Kim Eun-hee’s verse “Those Cats!” which contemplates the strange coexistence of death and persistence.
The tension between the two is palpable yet presented in a measured equilibrium. Huo’s works draw on traditional belief systems, rigid yet in motion; Cha’s works reimagine faith as personal ritual, tactile and tender. Huo deconstructs the machinery of belief, while Cha sanctifies the remnants it leaves behind. But in the shared space between them, there is institutional resistance where faith is not preached — it’s studied, felt and quietly remade. The exhibition captures the essence of diaspora art: It matters not as a fixed identity, but as a motion — something sent, spun and still becoming.
BY LEE JIAN [lee.jian@joongang.co.kr]
No comments
Post a Comment