Seoul Museum of Art presents Where Beings Be, a solo exhibition by Jae-Eun Choi (b. 1953), one of Korea’s leading contemporary artists. Her multidisciplinary practice―spanning sculpture, video, installation, and architecture―has uniquely illuminated the relationships between nature and all life within multilayered dimensions of space and time.
Choi relocated from Korea to Japan in 1975 and there immersed herself in Sogetsu-style ikebana at the Sogetsu School, then a pivotal hub for avant-garde art activities in Japan. Studying the practices of Sofu Teshigahara and Hiroshi Teshigahara, she experienced firsthand the transformative shift in which avant-garde ikebana broke from its traditional definitions and expanded into land-based experimentation, a formative moment that significantly shaped her artistic practice. Since that time, Choi has sustained an active international presence, including representing the Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1995), participating in the Sao Paulo Biennial (1991), and being invited to the main exhibition of the Venice Architecture Biennale (2016). At the Grand Tea Ceremony in Paris (1993), Choi presented the teahouse Another Moon alongside Charlotte Perriand, Ettore Sottsass, Tadao Ando, and others in UNESCO’s Garden of Peace, a project which allowed her to solidify her presence in major international exhibitions.
Within Korea, Choi’s practice spans major site-specific and public commissions such as Synchronous (1990) at Kyungdong Presbyterian Church in Seoul; Seon Space (1995–1998), the sarira stupa dedicated to Venerable Seongcheol at Haeinsa Temple in Hapcheon; and Direction of Time (1994) at Samsung Medical Center in Seoul, as well as the long-term demilitarized zone (DMZ) initiative the Dreaming of Earth project(2015–ongoing) which later expanded into the ongoing project Nature Rules (2020–ongoing).
The title of this exhibition, Where Beings Be, draws on Choi’s notion of the “pact of co-living” (共生之約)―a concept that gestures beyond language toward a primordial understanding of coexistence that predates civilization itself. As the etymological roots of “binding” and “promising” converge in the characters for “약” (約, yak) and “속” (束, sok) in the Korean title, this title evokes an ancient continuum in which beings have always existed in interwoven, mutually sustaining relationships.
Encompassing five thematic sections―“Lucy,” “Tolling Bell,” “Microcosmos,” “Names of the Unseen,” and “Nature Rules: Beyond Boundaries”― the exhibition additionally presents an extensive archival section to further contextualize the evolution of Choi’s artistic thinking. It strives to evoke the expansive temporal continuum shared by the earliest members of humankind and people today, revealing the responsibility humans bear for the destruction of nature and life. Through bleached coral, the fragile environment of the DMZ, and vanishing wildflowers, it rekindles the possibility of coexistence and guides viewers toward the ecological solidarity envisioned by the artist. Amidst the rapidly changing conditions of our planet, Jae-Eun Choi: Where Beings Be asks what kind of life we ought to pursue.
