Frieze House Seoul will open its first exhibition in September 2025 with UnHouse, curated by writer, curator, and and gallerist Jaeseok Kim. The exhibition reimagines the home — one of the most intimate yet political spaces — through the frame of queerness.
Featuring works by Joeun Kim Aatchim, Haneyl Choi, Lee Dong-hyun, Anne Imhof, Em Kettner, Dan Kim,
Dew Kim, Rebecca Ness, Catherine Opie, Grim Park, P. Staff, Willa Wasserman and Xiyadie, ‘UnHouse’
will transform each room of the multi-room space into a distinct narrative thread, inviting visitors to navigate and inhabit new perspectives. Bringing together internationally acclaimed queer artists and emerging Korean voices, the exhibition is structured around four thematic axes Body/Identity, Space/Power, Relation/Care, and Memory/Transmission – offering layered ways to perceive the idea of home. Participating galleries include Commonwealth and Council, Ghebaly, Jessica Silverman, Lehmann Maupin, P21, Sprüth Magers, Sultana, THEO Gallery, and xlarge.
Set within a long-abandoned residential building, the staircases, tiled glass windows, corridors and ceilings are integrated into the artworks themselves, inviting visitors to experience the home in unexpected ways. Throughout ‘UnHouse’, the home will be explored as both a site of imposed silence and gender norms, and as a place of refuge from external violence — a setting for solitude, self-exploration and the redefinition of belonging. Through immersive environments, sculptural forms and lens-based works, the exhibition will consider how each artist challenges normative identity structures, questions spatial hierarchies, and translates personal emotions and memories into visual form.
UnHouse’ offers ways of rethinking domestic space, drawing on diverse cultural, political and personal
contexts. Works inhabit the space like unexpected hosts or spectral presences, appearing in stairwells,
courtyards, and corridors, inviting visitors to step beyond familiar structures and imagine ‘another home’ – one that is dismantled, rearranged and open to new possibilities.
Under the leadership of newly appointed Director Andy St. Louis, a specialist in contemporary Korean art and visual culture, Frieze House Seoul will combine international expertise with cross-cultural exchange, presenting projects that resonate both locally and globally.
Patrick Lee, (Director of Frieze Seoul), said:
‘UnHouse’ reflects the kind of ambitious, thought-provoking projects we envision for Frieze House Seoul. By collaborating with Jae Seok Kim and this group of artists with their representing galleries, we are creating a space for dialogue that resonates locally and internationally, and sets the tone for what this new venue can be — a place that strengthens the ecosystem and fosters a sense of community among artists, galleries and audiences.
Jaeseok Kim, (Curator of ‘UnHouse’) said:
The exhibition ‘UnHouse’ interrogates and reconstructs the notion of ‘home’ from a queer vantage point. It does not erase the ambivalence of domestic space but insists on the possibility of reordering it—turning the home into a site for experimentation and queer potentiality. In the current Korean context, where discourses on gender, sexuality, and the legalization of same-sex marriage have become increasingly volatile, to revisit the concept of home through queerness is not merely symbolic but profoundly political. Within this framework, the works do not simply occupy the house; they inhabit it in shifting registers—as hosts, as strangers, as spectral presences, or as landscapes of the unknown—thus destabilizing and reimagining how audiences from around the globe encounter domestic space.
Frieze House Seoul ‘UnHouse’, September 2nd – October 2nd, 2025, Seoul 17, Dongho-ro 15-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul 04598
Curated by Jaeseok Kim
About
Frieze House Seoul is a new year-round space dedicated to presenting boundary-pushing contemporary exhibitions and creating a platform for dialogue between Seoul and the wider art world. UnHouse is the first in a program of projects that will contribute to the ongoing exchange between the Korean art scene and a global network of artists, galleries and audiences.
Jaeseok Kim is the Former Editor-in-Chief of Art in Culture, a leading contemporary art magazine in Korea, and former Creative Director at Gallery Hyundai. Kim currently runs xlarge, an exhibition space converted from his own living space. He is active as an exhibition curator, lecturer, and moderator, and regularly contributes essays and interviews on the art scene and artists in Korea and abroad to various publication.
Andy St. Louis is a prominent voice in the international discourse surrounding contemporary Korean art,
with more than a decade of experience as a Seoul-based art critic and curator. He is the author of Future
Present: Contemporary Korean Art, a survey of Millennial Korean artists, and the founder of Seoul Art Friend, an online platform dedicated to promoting Seoul’s dynamic art scene.
