Surfacing the Shadows: Korean Culture in White City, 1910

In collaboration with Tamaki Ono

As part of In the Flow, an international collaboration between Korea, Japan, and the United Kingdom, this project delves into the silenced histories of Korean art and culture as they were cast into shadows in White City, London.

As a Korean immigrant and artist based in London, I have investigated the historical and cultural entanglements between Korea and Britain dating back to the late 19th century. Surfacing the Shadows: Korean Culture in White City revisits the 1910 Japan–British Exhibition, where Korea was introduced not as an independent entity, but as part of Japan’s display of imperial power. Coinciding with the year Korea was officially annexed by Japan (1910–1945), the exhibition presented Korea to British audiences through a colonial lens. I am conducting historical research into the cultural artefacts as well as the architecture of the Korean Pavilion exhibited at the event.

Through a process of deep-mapping, together with collaborator Tamaki Ono, I examine White City’s urban transformation over the past century, employing cartography, film, model-making, and an upcoming publication to trace these shifts. My site-responsive practice retraces the former Korean Pavilion and wider exhibition grounds, with movements echoed by plants gathered from the area. I investigate the origins of these plants as symbols of immigration, preserving them through cyanotype printing. These botanical traces serve as quiet, embodied archives—acts of remembrance that resurface forgotten histories and reimagine cultural memory through ecological and reflective gestures.