Storage Story

To mark its grand opening, the Photography Seoul Museum of Art presents Storage Story, an inaugural exhibition that reframes the museum’s formation not as a bureaucratic procedure or material outcome, but as a site of sensory and multivocal interpretation. This exhibition proposes that photography can extend beyond documentation to serve as a platform for artistic reflection and practice.

The exhibition title draws from the museum’s location in Chang-dong (倉洞)―a historical grain storage site. Today, the notion of storage shifts toward the museum’s role as a repository of images, memory, collections, and data. Yet, this archive is not static. Rather, it becomes a dynamic site of narrative emergence―an intersection of historical context and creative reinterpretation.

The exhibition defines photography’s representative functions as “Material,” “Record,” and “Information,” collaborating with six contemporary artists who engaged with the construction site, materials, collections and archives, and the cultural and ecological context of Chang-dong. This approach positions the museum’s emergence not merely as an institutional milestone but as a collective act shaped by memory, technology, and structural transformation. The exhibition simultaneously reconsiders the ontology of photography, exploring its multifaceted role in contemporary art.

As the museum’s first curatorial project, Storage Story asks how photography might be reimagined and recontextualized within the field of contemporary art. It considers the medium not only as a widely used and beloved form but also as a conduit for personal and collective memories.