Patrick Sun, executive director of Sunpride Foundation, poses with Oh In-hwan's "Where He Meets Him in Seoul" on the floor and Mark Bradford's "Nadir" behind him on the wall for "Spectrosynthesis: Seoul" at Art Sonje Center in Seoul, Sunday, during an interview with The Korea Times. Courtesy of Sunpride Foundation
Sunpride Foundation founder and executive director Patrick Sun likes to joke about his last name. But at Art Sonje Center in Seoul, he is doing more than beaming — he is shining light queer histories, long scattered and half-hidden in the city, helping them slowly come into public view.
Art Sonje Center is currently hosting “Spectrosynthesis Seoul,” the first large-scale institutional exhibition in Korea devoted to queer art, featuring works by 74 artists and collectives from Korea and beyond. The show is the fourth edition in Sunpride’s touring “Spectrosynthesis” series — following Taipei, Bangkok and Hong Kong — and brings together pieces from the foundation’s collection and new commissions to sketch a queer cartography of Seoul.
Blending “spectrum” and “synthesis” in its title, the exhibition invites multiple voices and perspectives on queer life to respond directly to the city’s shifting social and political landscape.
