Spectrosynthesis Seoul
Art Sonje Center, Seoul
Mar 20–Jun 28, 2026

“Spectrosynthesis Seoul” is the fourth installment of Sunpride Foundation’s landmark exhibition series dedicated to LGBTQ+ art across Asia, following presentations in Taipei, Bangkok, and Hong Kong. For its Korea chapter, the show excavates the experiences of those marginalized during the country’s rapid modernization, as well as the subcultural geography of Seoul neighborhoods like Ikseon, Nagwon, and Itaewon, which are long recognized as the birthplaces of Korean queer life. Featuring over 70 artists across various generations and regions, the show includes works by Ayoung Kim, Kang Seung Lee, Danh Võ, and Ching Ho Cheng, as well as new commissions by siren eun young jung, Mark Bradford, Maria Taniguchi, Dew Kim, and Grim Park.

Sin Wai Kin, ESSENCE (2024)

ESSENCE takes the form of a luxury cologne campaign featuring the artist’s recurring alter ego Wai King as brand ambassador, who is pictured riding a horse through a rural Arcadian landscape, deep in thought. Working within the logic of advertising, Sin Wai Kin uses the campaign format to demonstrate how masculine identity is assembled through image and repetition, revealing the commercialized structures of identification and desire that consumer products are built to sustain.

Dew Kim, DEEPSPACE PAROUSIA (2026)

Expanding on his multimedia installation DEEPSPACE EXODUS (2020–22), Dew Kim’s new commission titled DEEPSPACE PAROUSIA comprises three parts. Among them, Inversion Chamber is a performative structure that rhythmically contracts and expands the air within, suggesting the intersection of tension and release in physical experience. Working through his alter ego Huh Need-you, Kim continues his practice of deconstructing and reconstructing the body as a medium of sensation.

siren eun young jung, Sick Seoul (2026)

Known for her long-term research into yeoseong gukgeuk (traditional all-women’s theater), siren eun young jung is among the most rigorous voices in contemporary Korean performance. In Sick Seoul, a new commission for the exhibition, she turns to the streets, documenting queer participation in the protests that swept through Seoul following the declaration of martial law in late 2024. The video work tracks how movement, rhythm, and repetition gradually transform gathered individuals into a collective political subject.

Inhwan Oh, Where He Meets Him in Seoul, 2001–

Since 2001, Oh has written the names of gay bars and clubs in powdered incense on gallery floors, kindling them at exhibition openings. The incense burns slowly across the run of the show, becoming ash, scent, and faint residual light, with the text becoming paradoxically more legible as it is destroyed. The work makes visible a community language that has long operated on the margins of society, rendering it simultaneously as image, smell, and physical sensation before it disappears entirely.

Louis Lu is an associate editor at ArtAsiaPacific.