2018

Community art, mixed media (video, interviews, photography, printed materials)

Group project (team of four)

Nakwon Project is a community-based art project that documents the cultural landscape of Nakwon-dong in Jongno 3-ga, an area shaped by first-generation Korean musicians and elderly communities. While Ikseon-dong across the street has become a popular tourist destination filled with young visitors, Nakwon-dong continues to sustain a culture largely unfamiliar to younger generations.

The project began by asking why so many elderly people gather in Nakwon-dong. Through field research, interviews, and visual documentation, it observes everyday spaces such as affordable restaurants, baduk rooms, old theaters, and music-related workplaces that remain central to their daily lives. The focus of the project is on Nakwon-dong’s music culture, where recording studios, lyricists, and composers continue to operate.

The elderly communities documented in this project lived through periods of significant social change, including the Japanese colonial period, the Korean War, and rapid economic development. Although many held personal dreams, economic and social conditions left little room to pursue them. Now, later in life, they return to Nakwon-dong as a place to reconnect with those earlier aspirations. The Nakwon Project records these lives alongside the broader history of social transformation in Korea.

Nakwon Girls is a spin-off project where we recorded the track ourselves, shot a music video, and extended the world into a small line of merchandise.