The front row of a BTS concert. A Joseon Dynasty landscape painting. The National Museum of Korea. These are some of the places you can visit without leaving DC (or straining your budget) when the exhibit “Korea: Cubically Imagined,” opens at the Korean Cultural Center at the Embassy of Korea on May 27.
The immersive experience features 15 installations created by Korean designers and artists that explore the country’s art, music, and film through virtual reality, projection mapping, and other digital technologies. “It’s so cutting edge,” says Hungu Lee, project manager at the Korean Cultural Center.
Visitors will don VR headsets and be transported to the K-pop group BTS’s “Map of the Soul ON:E” online concert and to sets from the Oscar-winning film Parasite, like the poor family’s flooded apartment and the bunker underneath the rich family’s house.
Other installations will highlight Korean language, history, and various art media, Lee says, by “combining Korean technology and the imagination of artists.” Several installations explore the history and evolution of art in Korea. Climbing Mt. Geumgang reimagines collections from the National Museum of Korea. Flower and Jungle by the design company d’strict are multicolored projections of flora like camellia and wisteria.
The exhibit, organized by the Korea Creative Content Agency and the country’s Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, has visited Paris, Hong Kong, and Beijing and lands in DC after a two-week run in New York City.
Time-entry tickets are free but registration is required. Korea: Cubically Imagined will run daily from 10 AM to 7 PM until June 9.
