Do Ho Suh’s Intimate Architectures of Transition

For Do Ho Suh, architecture is less monument than a second skin that can be spatialised, worn, moved, and refitted. Drawing on traditional East Asian spatial sensibilities, where architecture is more porous and breathes with its inhabitants, the artist labours in weightless fabric and layered paper, meticulously transcribing the spaces where he has lived into translucent and portable forms and imprints.

Having left South Korea in the 1990s, memory and absence are rendered present and often weightlessly tactile in Suh’s practice, which could be described as an inquiry into how our bodies hold space, and how space, in turn, holds us. In the case of the Rubbing/Loving series, which the artist began in 2013, Suh papers over rooms and homes to transcribe their granular details by rubbing their papered surfaces with graphite pencil. Time collapses into sensation through this labour of archaeological and physical closeness, creating a fraying of the time and space of memory transcribed into porous, moveable material. For Rubbing/Loving: Seoul Home (2013–2022), Suh moulded rice paper used in traditional Korean architecture onto the surfaces of the Hanok in which he grew up, gradually wearing down his fingerprints in the process.

That logic of transition that shapes Suh’s practice defines his approach to collaboration, too, as he reveals in this conversation. In the context of the artist’s residencies with STPI, which he describes as one of the most nourishing parts of his practice, sewing becomes drawing, technicians become co-makers, while both play, and collaboration functions as an ethos more than a method. Because what is a home if not a space of meaning created in relation?

You’ve talked about your work being about the body, and how it shapes relational experiences. What arises in your body in the act of rubbing (and loving) the spaces you’ve lived in and departed for your Rubbing/Loving series? Would you describe the process as a meditative, hallucinatory, or conversational state?

It’s probably a combination of all three. It’s extremely active and has to be, in order for the rubbings to work visually and conceptually. If I take the New York project, where I repeatedly rubbed the interior of my rented studio apartment and then eventually, the entire interior of the brownstone housing my studio on West 22nd Street, I was working under intense time pressure. My landlord, Arthur Henoch, who I had become very close to, had passed away and the house was going to be sold. Arthur’s family gave me permission to do the rubbing during that period.

The rubbing itself is always exhausting and that New York project was so huge in every way. When rubbing, you need to apply just the right level of pressure with the pencil or fingertip. Not too much, not too little, consistently. I lost my fingerprints during that process in New York. It takes your literal DNA. But I think the mental exhaustion is the greater challenge.

Wrapping each surface basically erases every detail. Then, when you start to rub, the marks and details begin to re-emerge. The actual gesture of rubbing is fairly mechanical. I’m not trying to render anything or explain anything. I’m just drawing out the details. But even so, I was confronting a really condensed experience of 20 years. Arthur’s loss had a huge emotional impact and each mark and detail began to trigger memories of events, conversations, moments.

At times, overtaken by the repetition and the scratching sound of the pencil, it did feel hallucinatory. The tiniest mark, each nook, cranny and hole—and there were hundreds of holes—would pull me back into a particular event. I had a habit of changing the furniture around or modifying the room whenever there was a change in my life, so rubbing allowed me to reflect on all the shifts and transitions. And that started to drive me crazy. At times I didn’t know whether I was trying to preserve a memory or move on.

I think that’s how your house gets inside of you. A building is more than just space. It’s more, even, than space plus time. The notion of space and time as separate is a very Western idea. For me, time and space are always together, and they are usually collapsed into one other.

This concession of your DNA through the rubbing process, of each detail becoming portal into memory, makes the idea of internalising a house feel less like a logical process and more like an overwhelming, enigmatic, re-feeling of everything at once.

That ties into your insight about time and space being emotionally integrated.

With that in mind, could we see your work—whether it’s a monumental rubbing or fabric house or room—as a material manifestation of your internal experiences?

Well, the viewer can and should take whatever makes sense to them from the work. But I see architecture as similar to clothing. Transportable architecture is a way of exploring how much of our space we carry with us. That’s an internal and external question. I suppose I’m interested in the layers that impact our seeing.

There is this feeling of weightless moveability and porosity in your practice. You’ve described this as relating to the symbiotic and flexible sensibilities of East Asian architectural traditions, which differs from Western architecture’s fixed perspectives and monumentality. Do you see your relationship to life and memory as a provisional, symbiotic architecture?

Provisional is probably a good word. Or maybe transitional. I believe we are moving through this life. I don’t talk about this very often but I saw a Taoist monk about 20 years ago. He could see my four past lives simultaneously and instantly. Past, present and future collapsed into one. We all have them. It was fascinating because as soon as he told me what each of the lives were, he forgot it all. They intentionally employ the sort of language that I think is meant to be forgotten. It’s a perspective that opened so much up in my thinking about how we move through the world and in what form.

You’ve described a feeling of never having left Korea, and sensing the shifting energies of a place, like the pine roots rising in your parents’ garden. This suggests a connection that is alive and dynamic even in absence. How would you describe this psychic link?

I think the concept of “home” really only came into focus for me when I left Korea. It was forged in absence and would be very different if I’d never left. I suppose I’d refer to my previous answer. It’s not that I feel very rooted, which potentially implies being stationary—it’s more an approach or a means of thinking through our connectivity. Of course, I’m no more able to do that than anyone else, but I’ve certainly thought about it a lot. My father was a philosopher and artist and I think in Korea there was a lot of openness to thinking through these existential questions. You had to make less of a concerted effort to do that, than you maybe would have to in parts of Western societies.

There seems to be a spirit of experimentation, collectivity and play in your practice, in terms of how you scale and collapse your relational architectures into two-dimensions through your work with STPI’s Workshop. Is play a method of discovery for you?

Yes! That’s a brilliant way to put it. We would never have come up with the thread drawing technique I’ve worked on for decades with STPI without embracing an element of play or failure—of pushing and pushing at what we think we knew about the different materials. It was one of STPI’s Workshop interns, Izziyana, who eventually landed on the idea of gelatin sheets as a means of embedding the sewing into the paper pulp. It’s part of the utter magic of STPI, where big, collaborative working sparks ideas and processes. Returning to STPI remains one of the most creatively nourishing parts of my practice.

What exhibitions are you working on now and how might they mark pivot points or an evolution of your practice?

Well in relation to your last question, I’m actually thinking about play and making some objects that you might call toys or furniture. One is a set of very simple toy wooden building blocks based on the spaces I’ve worked with in my fabric architecture and rubbing works. I’m very interested in these things.

I also have what I would consider my first retrospective survey this year, at MMCA in Seoul, which opens this August. It’s a very large and complex show and I’m very excited about it. I also have museum shows in other parts of the world that haven’t been announced yet, so we’re busy!

Do Ho Suh’s largest-ever retrospective will take place at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul, and will run from 27 August 2026 to 9 February 2027.

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World View distils conversations with leading artists from around the globe, to explore how they see the world through the prism of their life and art.