NEWS
THE UNCLASSIFIED
- Post Date12 Aug 2026
- attached file
25 September – 31 December 2026
Korean Cultural Centre UK (KCCUK), London
Free admission
Private View: 24 2026, 6 – 8pm
A contemporary exhibition exploring how museums shape the ways culture is preserved, recorded and made visible, presented to coincide with the British Museum’s major exhibition Korea this autumn
The exhibition brings together four leading contemporary Korean and Korean-heritage artists: Meekyoung Shin, Ayoung Kim, siren eun young jung, and Gala Porras-Kim
Featuring a new commission by Meekyoung Shin, created in collaboration with Lush, soap sculptures will travel across the UK, taking up residence in public spaces before returning to the gallery - their forms transformed through everyday use
siren eun young jung, Deferral Theatre, Single Channel Video, Full HD, Colour, Stereo Sound, 35mim 05sec, 2018
The Korean Cultural Centre UK presents The Unclassified (25 September – 30 November 2026), a group exhibition of four leading contemporary Korean and Korean-heritage artists, Meekyoung Shin, Ayoung Kim, siren eun young jung, and Gala Porras-Kim, exploring how museums shape the way we understand, remember, and interpret culture. The exhibition interrogates the limits of the systems and assumptions through which museums produce cultural knowledge, with works that challenge what can be collected, classified and contained.
The Unclassified is presented to coincide with the British Museum’s forthcoming exhibition Korea (opening 1 October 2026) which centres on the acclaimed Lee Kun-hee Collection - one of the most significant private collections in Korean cultural history. Unfolding across four key themes, The Unclassified explores the ways in which museums preserve, record, archive and make culture visible. In doing so, the exhibition offers alternative ways of thinking about culture and heritage, examining what museums can and choose to preserve, and what remains beyond their reach.
Preservation | Meekyoung Shin
A highlight of the exhibition is an interactive new commission by Meekyoung Shin, Korean Classic: In Use (2026), inspired by the plaster casts of classical Greco-Roman heads familiar to generations of Korean art students. Produced in collaboration with Lush, the soap sculptures begin their journey beyond the gallery, travelling across the UK to schools, restaurants, a Scottish whisky distillery and other public spaces, where visitors will be encouraged to handle and use them. As part of the project, selected Lush stores in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and London Oxford Street will each display up to two of Shin's sculptures at their handwashing stations, inviting customers to become active participants in the work. Gradually worn away through everyday contact, the sculptures will return to the exhibition transformed by touch and time, challenging conventional ideas of conservation, permanence, and the museum's role in preserving objects.
Beyond the Archive | siren eun young jung
Museums preserve cultural knowledge through objects and collections, but some traditions are passed on through people and performance. siren eun young jung's Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project (2008 – ongoing) centres on yeoseong gukgeuk, an all-female theatre genre that flourished in South Korea in the 1950s. With women performing all roles, including male characters, the art form actively subverted heteronormative gender roles and offered a historically significant space for gender fluidity, same-sex desire, and queer expression. Now rarely performed, it survives largely through the memories and experiences of first-generation performers. Through video, performance, interviews, and archival materials, Jung’s project creates a living archive shaped by oral testimony, embodied memory, and queer genealogy, tracing how knowledge and cultural traditions are passed across generations. Half of the project's archive will be presented in the UK for the first time.
Competing Records | Ayoung Kim
Ayoung Kim presents the two-channel video installation PH Express (2011/2012), which revisits the Port Hamilton Incident of the 1880s, when the Korean peninsula became a site of negotiation between imperial powers, its own sovereignty barely legible in the official record. Blending documentary, fiction, and dark humour, the work moves between historical research and imagined narratives to question how history is recorded, whose voices become part of the official record, and who has the authority to shape our understanding of the past.
Visibility | Gala Porras-Kim
Gala Porras-Kim presents two works, Burial chamber scene (2025) and All Earth energy sources are known to come from the Sun (2025), which explore the limits of museum conservation and control. Burial chamber scene imagines the view from inside a grave, inviting viewers to reflect on the aspects of cultural heritage that remain beyond complete understanding, regardless of how advanced systems of research or conservation become. In All Earth energy sources are known to come from the Sun, a brass sheet reflects natural sunlight onto a gallery wall, gradually leaving a mark shaped by changing environmental conditions rather than the artist's direct control.
“This autumn, audiences have a unique opportunity to experience the breadth and depth of Korean art and culture, with major exhibitions opening across London alongside the continued international momentum of events such as Frieze Seoul. We hope visitors to The Unclassified will gain a deeper understanding of the dynamic ways contemporary artists are reimagining how Korean heritage is preserved, experienced, and shared.” – Jaemin Cha, Curator, KCCUK
The exhibition is presented in collaboration with Lush and Somerset House, with site partnerships from SOAS University of London, Delfina Foundation, the Glenfiddich Artist Residency, Soom Restaurant, Café Babka and Gaia Food & Drinks.
Notes to Editors
For more information, press appointments, high-res images and to request interviews please contact Zara Doshi or Izzy Richings at Pelham Communications: zara@pelhamcommunications.com | izzy@pelhamcommunications.com
Press kit: LINK
About the Artists:
Meekyoung Shin (b. 1967, Cheongju, South Korea) is an internationally recognised Korean artist working between London and Seoul, known for her distinctive practice of creating sculptures from soap. Her work has been exhibited widely at major museums, galleries, and biennales, exploring themes of transience, replication, cultural translation, and how objects acquire meaning and value over time.
Shin’s soap sculptures often reinterpret historical objects—including classical statues, ceramics, and ritual artefacts—through a material capable of gradual transformation, erosion, and disappearance. By translating seemingly enduring forms into an unstable material, she challenges assumptions surrounding authenticity, permanence, and value, inviting viewers to reconsider how objects acquire significance and cultural identity across different times and contexts.
Recent major projects include Eastern Deities Descended, a monumental outdoor commission created for The Shape of Time: Korean Art after 1989 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (2023–24). In 2026, Shin was selected for the Glenfiddich Artists in Residence programme in Scotland, where she extended her long-term investigations into the use, weathering, and transformation of sculptural objects over time.
Her work has also been presented in numerous international exhibitions, including Korean Eye at the Saatchi Gallery, London (2012); Fantastic Ordinary at the Saatchi Gallery, London (2010); Translation–An Epic Archive at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon (2013); and Translation–Moon Jar in the Korean Gallery at the British Museum, London (2007).
Shin received her BFA in Sculpture (1990) and MFA in Sculpture (1993) from Seoul National University. After relocating to London in 1995, she completed a second MFA in Sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. She later received an MA in Ceramics & Glass from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2017.
Ayoung Kim (b. 1979, Seoul, South Korea) is a Seoul-based contemporary artist recognised for her speculative, research-driven practice spanning video, VR, performance, game simulations, and immersive installations. Through complex narrative worlds combining moving image, sound, and interactive elements, she explores how reality is shaped and mediated by technology, power, and storytelling.
Kim’s expansive practice examines themes including nationhood, global resources, biopolitics, gender, ancient myths, technoprecarity, and the built environment. Drawing on speculative fiction and world-building, her works challenge boundaries between the real and imagined, reflecting on contemporary systems of knowledge, identity, and control.
Kim has held solo exhibitions at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2026); MoMA PS1, New York (2025); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2025); Atelier Hermès, Seoul (2025); Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne (2024); and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2016) among others.
She has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the CHANEL Next Prize from the CHANEL Culture Fund (2026); the LG Guggenheim Award from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (2025); the ACC Future Prize from the National Asian Culture Center, Korea (2024); the Golden Nica Award at Prix Ars Electronica, Austria (2023); and the Terayama Shuji Prize at the Image Forum Festival, Japan (2023). She was a supported artist for the Korea Artist Prize (2019) and a recipient of the Young Artist of the Year Award from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Korea (2015).
siren eun young jung (b. 1974, Incheon, South Korea) is one of South Korea’s most influential video and queer-feminist artists. Working across video, performance, installation, and photography, she explores issues around gender and sexuality in relation to Korean history, politics, and culture through long-term research projects. Her work often examines marginalised narratives and alternative forms of knowledge, challenging dominant historical perspectives and representations.
jung has participated in numerous international exhibitions and biennales, including MOMENTA Biennale d’art contemporain(2023); the 58th Venice Biennale (2019); the Shanghai Biennale (2018); the Taipei Biennale (2016–2017); the Gwangju Biennale (2016); Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane (2015); and the Mediacity Seoul Biennale (2014). Her work has been presented at major institutions including the Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2026); Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart (2026); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Seoul(2023) ; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (2023); Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2020); the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2017); the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, Singapore (2017); the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the New Museum, New York (2008, 2007).
jung studied Fine Arts and feminist theory at Ewha Womans University, Seoul, completing her BFA, MFA, and DFA, and before earning an MA in Feminist Theory and Practice in the Visual Art from the University of Leeds. She has received numerous awards including the Korea Artist Prize (2018), Sindoh Art Prize (2015), and Hermes Foundation Art Award (2013).
Gala Porras-Kim (b. 1984, Bogotá, Columbia) is a Columbian-Korean-American interdisciplinary artist who lives and works between Los Angeles and London. Her practice spans drawing, sculpture, and installation, exploring the relationships between language, history, cultural heritage, and the institutional frameworks through which objects and knowledge are preserved and interpreted. Porras-Kim examines how museums, archives, and heritage institutions shape narratives around cultural artefacts, questioning systems of classification, ownership, and meaning.
Her work has been exhibited at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2026); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2025); Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2024); MoMA, New York (2023); Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul (2023); MMCA, Seoul (2023); MUAC, Mexico City (2023); Liverpool Biennial (2023); Gwangju Biennial (2021); São Paulo Art Biennial (2021); and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2019, 2017).
Porras-Kim has held fellowships and residencies at leading institutions, including Museo delle Civiltà, Rome, in collaboration with MAO – Museo d’Arte Orientale, Turin (2023–2025); the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2020–2022); and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Cambridge (2019). She has received numerous awards, including the MacArthur Fellowship (2025), Gold Prize (2023), Art Matters Foundation Grant (2019), Artadia Los Angeles Award (2017), Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2016), and Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2015).
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