What does it mean to call a place home when you are always moving?

For Do Ho Suh, home is not necessarily a fixed place. Throughout his life, Suh has moved between different countries and cities, including Seoul, New York, Berlin, and London. Instead of leaving these places behind, he has carried them with him through his art. He turns rooms, doors, hallways, and houses into memories that stay with him.

This makes Suh's work feel almost nomadic. A nomad does not have one permanent home. Instead, home becomes something that moves with them. Suh's art brings us to think about home in a similar way. A home does not always have to be one place. It can also be the memories we collect from the places we have lived.

One work that shows this idea is Home within Home within Home within Home within Home (2013). The work is a recreation of Suh's childhood home in Seoul inside the house he later lived in in Providence, Rhode Island.

The house is made mainly from polyester fabric and aluminum. Unlike a normal house, it is light and transparent. It almost looks like a memory of a real building. These layers for houses he lived in shows how our past does not simply disappear when we move. His childhood home in Seoul is still part of his life in America.

Suh explores this idea again in his more recent work, Perfect Home: London, Horsham, New York, Berlin, Providence, Seoul (2024). The work brings together details from the many homes he has lived in.

At first, the work may look like an empty room. But as you look closer, you can find details from different homes: doors, switches, handles, and other familiar objects. Made with polyester and stainless steel, the work has these small pieces of different places together in one space.

This is what makes Suh's work feel so connected to a nomadic way of life. His homes move, overlap, and change, just like what people do. In his works, home can be a collection of places and memories.

For students who have lived in different cities, countries, schools, or dorms, this idea may feel familiar. Sometimes, home is not one place. It is made from all the places we have been.

See the Exhibition!

Suh's current exhibition, Do Ho Suh: Walk the House, is on view at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (MMCA, 국립현대미술관). The exhibition brings works from more than three decades of his career, which explore the ideas of home, memory, and movement. It is a chance to see how Suh turns the places he has lived into something we can all relate to.