Sculptor Kim Seon-young's 'Carried Lives' exhibition
Cassia Sokcho, a landmark resort at Daepohang harbor, is reinventing itself as an art gallery.
Cassia Sokcho, part of the global premium hotel and resort group Banyan Group, announced Monday it is launching a permanent exhibition project with sculptor Kim Seon-young, turning the entire hotel into a stage for art as it deepens its role as a cultural platform.
The exhibition, titled "Carried Lives," was conceived to offer guests a more lyrical experience while laying the groundwork for revitalizing arts and culture in the local community.
A total of 45 works are placed throughout key areas of the hotel — including the lobby, the entrance to the grand ballroom "Ballroom," the cafe and bakery "Horizon," and the entrances to other facilities — so that guests encounter the pieces naturally as they move through the space. The exhibition runs through 2028.
Kim has built her practice around a concept she calls "VESSELL" (a fusion of "Vessel" and "Cell"), expanding everyday objects such as bags and rings into vessels for human memory, relationships and time. Working in bronze, stainless steel, resin and crystal, she explores the traces of human existence and lived experience.
The exhibition title "Carried Lives" refers to the memories, relationships and marks of time that people carry with them through life. The works take on distinct scenes and meanings within the hotel — a place where staying and moving coexist — inviting visitors to reflect on their own lives and experiences.
Highlight works include "The Beginning of Welcome and Stay" and "Space of Promise," both installed in the lobby, and "Variations Holding Light," positioned at the entrance to the Ballroom.
Each piece symbolizes personal memory and relationships, communal connection, and the passage and cycles of time, breathing organically with its surroundings. "Space of Promise" is particularly notable: 4,000 human-body units form a single vast circle, visually expressing the process by which different beings forge relationships and come together as one form.
"The Beginning of Welcome and Stay," installed in the lobby, links bags — objects of everyday life — in a repeating chain that resolves into a single structure, symbolizing a life's journey shaped by accumulated time, choices and relationships. The sculpture is the first thing guests encounter upon entering the hotel, evoking the start of a new experience and the meaning of staying, and distilling the exhibition's central message.
A Cassia Sokcho official said the exhibition was designed not merely for viewing art, but to let guests engage with it naturally throughout their stay. "Going forward, Cassia Sokcho will continue to expand its role as a cultural platform that presents new possibilities in arts and culture and connects creators, customers and the local community," the official said.
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