Hyunju Oh

Based in  London & South Korea

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I. The water remembers
II. Soft Landing
III. Floating Particles
IV. Things Left Behind
V. Dep.-Dep.

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Education

Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
MFA Fine Art — current

Pusan National University, Busan, Korea
BFA in Western Painting

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Solo Shows

DEP.-.DEP.
Artian Gallery, Seoul, Korea
6 – 13 Sept 2023


Award & Recognitions

Excellent Work Selection, 3rd Artistart Exhibition, KT&G Sangsangmadang, Busan, Feb 2023

Special Selection in Figurative Art, 48th Grand Arts Exhibition of Busan, Busan Fine Arts Association, Nov 2022Group shows  (selected)

Hidden at Arm's Length
AMP Gallery, London, UK
14 – 18 May 2025

FOCUS ARTFAIR
Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
10 – 13 Oct 2024

Unexpected Scenery
Museum 1, Busan, Korea
Sep 2024

ASYAAF
Hongik Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
7 Jul – 31 Aug 2024

FOCUS ARTFAIR
Chelsea Industrial, New York, USA
25 – 29 Aug 2023

Artistart
KT&G Daechi Gallery, Seoul, Korea
18 – 21 May 2023

Sprout
Café in Busan, Busan, Korea
2 May – 2 Jun 2023

3rd Artist Support Exhibition “Artistart”
KT&G Busan Gallery, Busan, Korea
1 – 16 Apr 2023

NEW WAVE
BEXCO, Busan, Korea
13 – 19 Dec 2022

ASYAAF
Hongik Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
26 Jul – 21 Aug 2022

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@five_strings_
fivestrings99@gmail.com

2025The water remembers



Marine rope, gloves, light, cable ties, metal frame, stickers, power cable

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The shipping container box series examines how the global logistics system, formalised in 1956, has rendered dockworkers increasingly invisible. Instead of depicting ports or labour directly, the works break down and recombine the geometry of the container box, incorporating maritime objects as partial, opaque traces of displaced bodies. Through these fragmented surfaces, the work reflects on how hidden labour might re-emerge—not through representation, but through the material pressure and residual presence embedded in the system that obscures it.

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The salt works use salt as a metaphor for both sea and sweat, drawing attention to the hidden labour that underpins global logistics. The project draws from the 2021 moment when the Ever Given became lodged in the Suez Canal—a scene that circulated widely as a meme, yet revealed two workers and an excavator confronting the scale of an automated system. Their brief reappearance exposed the human labor that modern logistics continually erases.

The work also responds to the EVERGREEN corporate logo, whose clean, modernist surface projects a myth of efficiency and seamless circulation. In contrast, salt introduces a fragile, crystalline materiality that unsettles this narrative. As a residue of bodies and oceans, it points to the contradictions and vulnerabilities that contemporary systems of movement attempt to conceal.

Through salt, I reflect on how what is concealed within vast systems can reappear—momentarily and vulnerably—like those two workers standing before the impossible scale of the Ever Given.

2025-2026Soft Landing

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'Anti-climb spikes' function as a sharp language of urban exclusion. I re-interpret these aggressive structures as organic, rounded forms—offering a 'soft landing' where a threat once existed.

The latent violence of the city becomes invisible when it is masked by aesthetic hospitality. The proximity between the human body and the structure highlights how seamlessly urban control camouflages itself into our communal spaces.

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2024
Things Left Behind

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2024Floating Particles

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2021-2023Dep. - Dep.

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