LONDON.- The Korean Cultural Centre UK presents The Unclassified (25 September – 30 November 2026), a group exhibition of four leading contemporary Korean and Korean-heritage artists, Meekyoung Shin, Ayoung Kim, siren eun young jung, and Gala Porras-Kim, exploring how museums shape the way we understand, remember, and interpret culture. The exhibition interrogates the limits of the systems and assumptions through which museums produce cultural knowledge, with works that challenge what can be collected, classified and contained.

The Unclassified is presented to coincide with the British Museum’s forthcoming exhibition Korea (opening 1 October 2026) which centres on the acclaimed Lee Kun-hee Collection - one of the most significant private collections in Korean cultural history. Unfolding across four key themes, The Unclassified explores the ways in which museums preserve, record, archive and make culture visible. In doing so, the exhibition offers alternative ways of thinking about culture and heritage, examining what museums can and choose to preserve, and what remains beyond their reach.

Preservation | Meekyoung Shin

A highlight of the exhibition is an interactive new commission by Meekyoung Shin, Korean Classic: In Use (2026), inspired by the plaster casts of classical Greco-Roman heads familiar to generations of Korean art students. Produced in collaboration with Lush, the soap sculptures begin their journey beyond the gallery, travelling across the UK to schools, restaurants, a Scottish whisky distillery and other public spaces, where visitors will be encouraged to handle and use them. As part of the project, selected Lush stores in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and London Oxford Street will each display up to two of Shin's sculptures at their handwashing stations, inviting customers to become active participants in the work. Gradually worn away through everyday contact, the sculptures will return to the exhibition transformed by touch and time, challenging conventional ideas of conservation, permanence, and the museum's role in preserving objects.

Beyond the Archive | siren eun young jung

Museums preserve cultural knowledge through objects and collections, but some traditions are passed on through people and performance. siren eun young jung's Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project (2008 – ongoing) centres on yeoseong gukgeuk, an all-female theatre genre that flourished in South Korea in the 1950s. With women performing all roles, including male characters, the art form actively subverted heteronormative gender roles and offered a historically significant space for gender fluidity, same-sex desire, and queer expression. Now rarely performed, it survives largely through the memories and experiences of first-generation performers. Through video, performance, interviews, and archival materials, Jung’s project creates a living archive shaped by oral testimony, embodied memory, and queer genealogy, tracing how knowledge and cultural traditions are passed across generations. Half of the project's archive will be presented in the UK for the first time.

Competing Records | Ayoung Kim

Ayoung Kim presents the two-channel video installation PH Express (2011/2012), which revisits the Port Hamilton Incident of the 1880s, when the Korean peninsula became a site of negotiation between imperial powers, its own sovereignty barely legible in the official record. Blending documentary, fiction, and dark humour, the work moves between historical research and imagined narratives to question how history is recorded, whose voices become part of the official record, and who has the authority to shape our understanding of the past.

Visibility | Gala Porras-Kim

Gala Porras-Kim presents two works, Burial chamber scene (2025) and All Earth energy sources are known to come from the Sun (2025), which explore the limits of museum conservation and control. Burial chamber scene imagines the view from inside a grave, inviting viewers to reflect on the aspects of cultural heritage that remain beyond complete understanding, regardless of how advanced systems of research or conservation become. In All Earth energy sources are known to come from the Sun, a brass sheet reflects natural sunlight onto a gallery wall, gradually leaving a mark shaped by changing environmental conditions rather than the artist's direct control.

“This autumn, audiences have a unique opportunity to experience the breadth and depth of Korean art and culture, with major exhibitions opening across London alongside the continued international momentum of events such as Frieze Seoul. We hope visitors to The Unclassified will gain a deeper understanding of the dynamic ways contemporary artists are reimagining how Korean heritage is preserved, experienced, and shared.” – Jaemin Cha, Curator, KCCUK

The exhibition is presented in collaboration with Lush and Somerset House, with site partnerships from SOAS University of London, Delfina Foundation, the Glenfiddich Artist Residency, Soom Restaurant, Café Babka and Gaia Food & Drinks.