Focus Asia returns to Frieze Seoul 2024 with ten solo artist presentations from Asia-based galleries opened in or after 2012. Steered by Joselina Cruz (Director and Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila) and Hyejung Jang (Chief Curator, Doosan Art Center, Seoul), this year’s edition welcomes many new participants, with five galleries making their Frieze fair debut. Focus Asia spotlights emerging and innovative voices working across a range of media, with questions about time, light, memory and material recurring across the section.
The inaugural presentation by New Delhi’s Blueprint 12 at Frieze Seoul spotlights Kingsley Gunatillake, whose work is a visceral response to Sri Lanka’s history of civil war. Gunatillake chars and carves the pages of found books and embeds figures of soldiers, deities and architectural motifs, to recall the burning of the Jaffna Library in 1981.
