Do Ho Suh: "Rubbing / Loving" | Art21 "Exclusive"

[Do Ho Suh: "Rubbing / Loving"]

I have a mutual friend who was
giving up this flat.

And so I took it.

I never lived anywhere else in New York City--

this is the first and the last place.

I had an interview with my landlord.

They heard that I'm an artist.

They were really concerned.

They were not sure whether I could actually
pay the rent.

But they let me live here.

It was my living space and studio
for eighteen years.

My artistic career started from here.

The whole process is to remember the space,

and also somehow memorialize the space.

Whoever is going to buy this place
is going to renovate the space

and everything is going to go.

It is quite a meaningful place for the family--

and also for me.

I've been moving around since I left Korea.

I'm living in London now.

It's a constant recalibration.

I try to understand my life as a movement
through different spaces.

--You can do this, as well.

--Yeah, don't worry.

--I know...

--[WOMAN] We just fixed it!

[ALL LAUGH]

--[SUH] Yeah.

After this project is done
and peeled away from the space,

I'll probably pack it and
show it somewhere in the future.

It's a bit difficult to take it off
from the objects,

but once you do that carefully,
it still contains the shape of the object.

I was constantly seeking
some other means to

capture the information of the space

that was lacking from my fabric version.

When I discovered it by rubbing,

it just brought the memories
associated with those details.

And there's hundreds of thousands of it.

When I did fabric versions of this space,

Arthur, the landlord,
was supporting my project emotionally.

You know, I don't know how much he understood
what I was doing back then,

but he always let me do crazy things
in this space.

If I write "rubbing" in Korean,

people could read it as "loving"

because there's no distinction between
"r" and "l" in Korean alphabet.

I think the gesture of rubbing is
a very loving gesture.

So, I made the connection
between rubbing and loving,

and that's how the title came about.

My energy has been accumulated,

and in way, I think, my rubbing shows that.

The darker area--doorknobs and locks--

that's the objects that you touch every time.

And just imagine how many times that I actually

flip that light switch when
I was living in here for eighteen years.

I'm trying to show the layers of time.

From the distance, it looks like a drawing.

As you get closer, it becomes very sculptural
and three-dimensional.

There's a point where it sort of changes
from two-dimensional to three-dimensional.

Arthur, he was suffering with
Alzheimer's disease.

A few months before he passed away,

I made a special effort to see him.

He warned me that he may not remember me.

I was prepared for that,

but we ended up talking two hours.

So at the end of the day,

I asked him to come down
to see what we were doing.

I showed him around and then he said,

"Oh, there's nothing much to see!"

You know, which is understandable.

But then he sat down and told me,

"You're welcome to do
whatever you want to do in this house."

And I was almost going to burst into tears

because that's exactly what he told me
you know, thirteen years ago,

when I was measuring the hallway
at 4 o'clock in the morning

because I didn't want to disturb other people.

He came down so quietly

and then saw me measuring the corner

and he said, "What are you doing?"

And I tried to explain [LAUGHS]

you know, about the project,

but he said the exact same thing:

"Do whatever you want to do."