At home and in the studio with Do Ho Suh

By Hannah Son     9/10/24 11:54pm

Visitors strolled through rows of sketches, thumbtacks and sticky notes pinned to the gallery walls of the Moody Center for the Arts during the Sept. 6 opening of “Do Ho Suh: In Process.” The exhibition emulates the studio of world-renowned artist Do Ho Suh, featuring major works by the South Korean-born and London-based artist in an unprecedented presentation of Suh’s practice that emphasizes his methodology and process.

Alison Weaver, executive director of the Moody Center and the curator of “In Process,” described Suh’s vision as an intimate display of his creative method.

“It feels a bit as if [Suh] has invited all of us to visit his studio,” Weaver said. “I feel very honored that he trusted us here at Rice to share these very personal materials and make them available to the public.”

---

---

Gesturing towards “The Bridge Project” — Suh’s multi-decade work that imagines a physical bridge between his past and present homes in Seoul, New York and London — Weaver identified Suh’s artistic signature as an approach of ongoing inquiry.

“[Suh’s works] are iterative, they’re creative, and it takes a certain durational quality to continue to engage with them,” Weaver said. “I keep calling it ‘speculative research,’ because he has an idea or hypothesis which is fantastical, but then he works hard to make it real.”

Years after Suh began “The Bridge Project” in 1999, he collaborated with Rice engineering students to bring new life to the project. 

Kalil Erazo, an assistant teaching professor of civil and environmental engineering, described the capstone project in which Suh collaborated with Rice engineering students to envision architecturally viable bridges. 

“Initially it was quite challenging trying to understand the vision of the artist, particularly coming from an engineering background,” Erazo said. “But then … combining [Suh’s] expertise with the work of the engineering team resulted in an incredible multidisciplinary collaboration where we all learned from one another.” 

Weaver and Suh sought to capture the significance of this collaborative process for Suh’s work. 

“When it came time to present the work, instead of … just pulling completed works out of the closet, we thought it would be interesting to … share what [Suh] goes through as he’s innovating and thinking about visually representing these ideas,” Weaver said. 

The immersive display of “The Bridge Project” also included video installations detailing the bridge design process and stop-motion sets — rigged with cameras, lights and open laptops alongside the felted wool miniatures. 

Moody Gallery guide Shem Brown explained how these set pieces were one part of the most recent addition to “The Bridge Project.”

“[The Moody Center] is actually co-premiering the short film along with a gallery in Seoul, which is Suh’s hometown,” Brown, a Wiess College sophomore, said.

Weaver commented on how the short film embodies another mode of speculative play for Suh.

“He’s really building a sense of home, asking ‘what are all the factors that inform that?’ It’s food, it’s architecture, it’s meaningful objects,” Weaver said. “So we’re sharing all of those things [in the exhibit]. We’re sharing the diner where someone traveling across the bridge might find a lovely meal.”

Erazo voiced appreciation for the Moody Center, crediting Sabrina Talghader, Wanqi Yuan and Natalie Pellette, the Rice engineering alumni involved in “The Bridge Project”.

“Seeing the final product exhibited at the Moody was incredibly inspiring,” Erazo said. “I was very proud of our students when I saw the results of the project showcased together with the rest of [Suh’s] outstanding models.”

Throughout its run, “In Process” will invite further collaboration from the Houston community.

“Visitors will be invited to help create a piece called ‘Artland’ using non-toxic, air dry clay,” Brown said. “In all other contexts, [Suh’s] work is shown as finished products for museums, but here, he’s inviting us to be a close part of the process. 

Moody Student Collaborative president Ashley Zhang hopes that the interactivity of “Artland,” the exhibition’s doodle wall for visitors to draw their own homes, and the student reception encourages Rice student activity around the Moody. 

“What I love most about the Moody is its interdisciplinary focus,” Zhang, a McMurtry College sophomore, said. “Rice is known to be a very STEM-oriented school, however, engaging with art is important for cultivating a different set of skills and gaining a broader perspective on the world … I myself am a biosciences major, and yet I am able to still enjoy and make connections with the art on display at the Moody.”

The collaboration facilitated by the Moody exhibit also contributes to a global call-and-response, from the concurrent exhibition in Seoul to Suh’s forthcoming retrospective at the art gallery Tate Modern in London. 

Weaver said that Suh intentionally engages with notions of home and place through these exhibitions.

“That’s indicative of the way [Suh] thinks about the world, that things are happening in many places. We travel between the places, and we bring something with us that’s important from each of those,” Weaver said. “It’s a truly beautiful gesture of care and of intimacy, and paying attention to every detail.”

---