Installation view of Kim Sung-hwan's "Ua a'o 'ia 'o ia e ia" at the Seoul Museum of Art, the artist's first solo public museum exhibition in Korea / Courtesy of the artist
For multidisciplinary artist Kim Sung-hwan, Hawaii is not just an idyllic dot on the map. It is a place deeply intertwined with history and identity.
Annexed by the United States in 1898, the island became both a waypoint and a new home for many early 20th-century immigrants journeying across the Pacific to the American mainland. Among them were Koreans, drawn by the promise of work on sugarcane plantations as cheap overseas labor. Meanwhile, for Hawaii's indigenous people, it remains a land taken and sovereignty lost.
In Kim's eyes, Hawaii thus embodies the untold stories of lives caught in the crevices of mainstream history — those who have drifted, and continue to drift, beyond the established confines of national borders, regional boundaries and ethnic categorizations.
The island has been the focal point for the artist's ongoing multipart research series, “A Record of Drifting Across the Sea,” since 2017. Now, at the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA), it takes center stage as a site for unraveling buried histories and weaving them into new systems of knowledge.
Kim Sung-hwan's five-part installation "Figure Complex" (2024) / Courtesy of the artist
In Kim's first solo public museum exhibition in Korea, viewers are invited to “become (both) witnesses and activators of the very sites where such ‘events of knowledge' occur, circulate and are manifested as praxis,” SeMA's Park Ga-hee described in her curatorial statement.
Its title, “Ua a‘o ‘ia ‘o ia e ia,” comes from Hawaiian, translating to “They learned from them. Learned, by them, their teaching.”
Spanning the museum's three galleries, the show opens by juxtaposing the modern colonial histories of Hawaii and the Joseon Dynasty (1932-1910).
At its heart is the five-part installation “Figure Complex,” a reimagined map of Hawaii populated by largely forgotten figures who once called the island home — Helen Ahn, a Joseon independence activist and wife of Ahn Chang-ho; Paul Hyun, a Korean American sculptor and son of independence fighter Soon Hyun; and Joan Lander and Abraham “Puhipau” Ahmad, filmmakers who traveled the archipelago in the 1970s to document the vanishing indigenous culture and language.
In the adjoining room rests the artist's collage drawing, “Poor Kolea Counts Na Po Mahina,” featuring a figure that blends human and bird forms. The work draws inspiration from the migratory Pacific golden plover, known locally as “kolea.” Revered on the island as a creature that departs and returns — a messenger for high chiefs — the kolea's moniker carries an added resonance among Koreans, with its phonetics echoing the name of their motherland.
“We can transport meanings from one place to another by highlighting shared elements between the two through metaphor,” Kim explained. “It's insightful to juxtapose two cultures through cross-analogy rather than excavation or direct translation. One can be both the metaphor and the origin of the other, and vice versa.”
Installation view of Kim Sung-hwan's "Ua a'o 'ia 'o ia e ia" at the Seoul Museum of Art / Courtesy of the artist
Installation view of Kim Sung-hwan's "Ua a'o 'ia 'o ia e ia" at the Seoul Museum of Art / Newsis
The exhibition then delves into a critical examination of how such history and knowledge have been framed and disseminated through limited perspectives. The artist promotes the creation of new systems of knowledge that will transform, adapt, and evolve through workshops and audience participation throughout the duration of the show.
For Kim, an artwork is not a fixed outcome of a single idea about a given object, but rather a fluid process of thinking — a way to engage with an object that is itself in flux.
This philosophy comes to life in the intentionally “unfinished” video installation, “Untitled,” a composite of fragmented films, images, narrations and sounds.
“Ua a‘o ‘ia ‘o ia e ia” runs through March 30 at SeMA.