HAR I: Closing Exhibition by Seongwon Park

Seongwon Park—Where Do I Come From, Where Am I Going?

Seongwon Park’s work emerges from close observations of urban spaces and their often overlooked details. Facades, vacant buildings, kiosks, windows, curtains, and traces of time become starting points for an artistic investigation into presence, memory, and absence.

At the center of her practice are places that have lost their original function. Park is interested in moments when architecture is no longer defined by its utility, but by the layers of history, transformation, and neglect inscribed upon it. Through drawing, painting, and sculpture, she translates these observations into new spatial narratives.

During her residency at the haubrok foundation, Park focused on a number of vacant buildings in Berlin-Lichtenberg. Many of these structures exist in a state between past and future: their original purpose has faded, while their future remains uncertain. For the artist, they embody a powerful form of absence—an emptiness that does not signify an end, but a condition of transition.

The project takes its title, Where Do I Come From, Where Am I Going?, from a phrase Park encountered in an abandoned building. Originally addressed to people, the question is redirected toward the buildings themselves. These deserted architectures appear as silent witnesses to social and political change, while simultaneously reflecting fundamental human experiences of displacement, uncertainty, loss, and renewal.

In Park’s work, buildings become portraits of a condition. Their external forms are preserved while their original functions recede into the background. The resulting works invite viewers to reflect on the relationship between people and the spaces they inhabit, and to reconsider absence not as a state of disappearance, but as an open condition filled with possibility.