Seongbuk-gu, home to Korea's artistic giants, transforms into an open-air gallery

Seoul's Seongbuk-gu, once home to artists and writers including Seo Se-ok, Byun Si-ji, Lee Tae-jun and Han Yong-un, is set to be steeped in art once more.

Seongbuk District Museum of Art, Seongbuk-gu District Office and the Seongbuk Cultural Foundation are hosting the 2026 Seongbuk Art Week across the district through Nov. 1.

Held for the first time this year, the event draws on surviving historic and cultural spaces to present seven special and curated exhibitions, 11 Seongbuk historic and cultural space projects, and network exhibitions at 22 art institutions across the district.

The theme, "Home: Continuing Breath," uses contemporary art to reinterpret the cultural heritage and historic sites of Seongbuk-gu — places that have become repositories of the district's history and daily life, going beyond the living and creative spaces of individual artists.

The standout exhibition of the art week is the special show "Seo Se-ok and Do Ho Suh: Caress (Mu)" at Seongbuk District Museum of Art. It focuses on the shared "home" of Seo Se-ok (1929–2020), a master of Korean ink-wash abstraction, and his son Do Ho Suh (64), an installation artist with a global profile. It is the first time works by both artists have been presented together in a single exhibition.

The show features Seo Se-ok's works reflecting on the idea of home — including "South-Facing House" and "Neighborhood" — alongside literati paintings such as "Heavenly Peach" and "Water Plantain and Grotesque Rock." New works by Do Ho Suh, rubbings taken from wall patterns, garden stonework and other fragments of the family home, are also installed.

Also on view are Seo Se-ok's "Human" series, Do Ho Suh's thread drawings and his new 2026 "Karma" series, together exploring the two artists' reflections on humanity and relationships.

A special exhibition marking the centenary of Byun Si-ji (1926–2013) — titled "Where Did You Come From, Where Are You Going?" — opens at Korea University Museum. Born on Jeju, Byun studied in Japan before establishing a home in Donam-dong, Seongbuk-gu, where he worked for 18 years.

The two-person show "Home: Connecting Two Sculptors," held at Seongbuk District Choi Man-lin Museum of Art, takes as its starting point "Jeongneung House," the shared home of Choi Man-lin (1935–2020) and Park Byung-wook (1939–2010), who were senior and junior classmates in the sculpture department at Seoul National University.

Choi lived in the house from 1965 to 1980 before moving to the site that is now the Choi Man-lin Museum of Art; Park inherited it and resided there until his death in 2010.

The exhibition presents 10 abstract sculptures and drawings Choi created while living at Jeongneung House alongside 15 figurative sculptures Park made there. Archival materials — a scale model of the house, photographs, architectural drawings and interview footage — are also on display, tracing how two distinct sculptural languages took shape within the same space.

At the foot of the Hanyangdoseong city wall, seven pieces from sculptor Jeong Hyun's (70) "Standing Person" series are installed. The works are made from railway sleepers — the structural supports beneath train rails — and are placed face-to-face with the ancient wall to convey the significance of place and the resilience of existence.

At Simujang, the house where Buddhist monk and independence activist Han Yong-un spent his final years, Lee Woo-sung (43) presents the exhibition "With a Singing Heart." The show reflects a wish for music to inhabit a space imbued with the longing for independence and the exchanges of literary figures.

The Buddhist allegorical painting "Simudo" — depicting the journey toward enlightenment through the search for a lost ox — is also reinterpreted through a contemporary lens. The work takes shape progressively through visitor-participation workshops.

At Choi Sun-woo's Former House, sculptor Choi In-su — who has engaged with a wide range of artifacts since his youth under the influence of Choi Sun-woo — presents sculptural works. Their simple forms, which foreground the material qualities of each medium, invite visitors to contemplate the structure and negative space of the hanok.

At a late Joseon-era scholar's garden in Seongbuk-dong, Han Sung-pil presents a work recreating Songseokjeong — a pavilion partially destroyed by fire in 2025 — as an ink-and-color painting on screen. The site, designated a scenic landscape, will be open to the public only during the Seongbuk Art Week period.

At Samcheonggak, a venue that figured prominently in Korean contemporary history during the 1970s and 1980s, Yuna Earl explores the spatial quality of past and present coexisting — expanding her practice from collage and digital collage into installation.

At the former sites of the Seongbuk Painting Research Institute, Seungseolam hermitage and the home of Joseon painter Jang Seung-eop, Lee Yeon-suk presents works that visualize the act of drawing.

Additional programming includes the Seongbuk Art Fair (Thursday through Sunday), where visitors can purchase works by artists recommended by Seongbuk exhibition spaces; the second Seongbuk Museum Forum on Thursday, themed around the preservation and use of cultural figures' former residences; and a performance tied to Lee Jeong-yun's exhibition, "A Warm Gap," on Saturday.

Individual exhibitions within Seongbuk Art Week run on varying schedules. Visitors wishing to take in multiple shows can use a loop bus — a single ticket allows unlimited boarding and alighting from Tuesday through Sunday.