WEBZINE ACC

A friend from Seoul is coming to visit Gwangju. This trip is her first KTX ride in years and the second time she has visited Gwangju. Ten years ago, she had visited me in my new home like this, having relocated from Seoul to pursue my writing career. She loves traveling, so she heads to nearby countries once yearly or, depending on the season, to different places in Korea. Some time ago, I had asked her to come down to Gwangju in a telephone conversation, and that came to reality quite soon. I had said there was a place she must visit in Gwangju.

We met up soon enough. Exit 6 leads to the interior of the National Asian Culture Center. When we emerged from the exit, my friend was evidently taken aback by the sheer size of the center.

The first place we visited was the Visitor Center. The Visitor Center had brochures for exhibitions, performances, experience programs, and tour programs. One can choose from thematic tours about the space, history, architecture, and public art, with tours such as Around the ACC, Architecture Tour, and Public Art Tour, and there is also a unique tour program that brings one to the seasonally changing spaces of the ACC. I booked the “Architecture Tour” for my friend because she is interested in architecture. The docent greeted us with a bright smile and started the tour with a story from “The Little Prince.”

During the tour, my friend said she could see why the ACC was compared to an oasis. Unlike the towering “landmark” structures, the ACC is a space where the entire building is built underground, the ground is open to the sky, and the view of the Mudeungsan Mountain can be found everywhere. The docent added that the ACC is not just a place to rest and told the story of the former Jeollanam-do Provincial Office. A red-bricked building built by Korean architect Kim Soon-ha in 1930 during the Japanese occupation, the former Jeollanam-do Provincial Office would become the site of the last stand during the May 18 Democratic Uprising in 1980 and was later returned to the people as the ACC Culture Exchange.

We took a break in the fragrant bamboo garden of the ACC Archive & Research. “So, this is the place that we went to 10 years ago?” my friend asked, remembering her first visit to Gwangju. She pointed to a building still under construction and asked, “What is this place?” Ten years later, she found herself in that place. The ACC, which has surreptitiously become a part of my daily life, may seem like a massive change to a friend from out of town. What is the ACC like through the eyes of a traveler?

I thought that the time was ripe for my own travel, to follow the seasonal winds and travel back in time to Asian seaport cities. Starting with the permanent exhibition “A World Unveiled by Monsoon: Port Cities of Southeast Asia” at the Asia Culture Museum, I made my way through the exhibition “Dear Baba-Nyonya: The Further into Cross-Culture in Seaport Cities” ACC Creation Hall 1. The crashing waves tickled our ears, and the churning sea spread before us. We felt like we had traveled a long way from home. At “A World Unveiled by Monsoon,” we felt like we had traveled back in time for a hundred years through the storytelling of the exhibition’s docent, while the “Dear Baba-Nyonya” awakened our senses through installations and immersive media. At the ACC merch store, DLAC, we were able to purchase merchandise related to the exhibitions we saw. My friend, who works as a daycare teacher, told me that she liked the woodworking pencils. I gladly opened my wallet.

We went to the Café, JINJUNGSUNG to assuage our parched throats. “The milk tea here is amazing,” my friend said. She ordered a cup for herself, and the sweet cup gave us the boost we needed.

The last exhibitions we visited were “Immigration on Ceramics” and “Connectivity Construction,” both hosted by ACC Creation. In the exhibition “Immigration of Ceramics,” I found the works of Linda Nguyen Lopez to be particularly interesting, especially how the cute and round shapes realized her exploration of dust and its temporal quality. Other works that captured the lives of the artists and broke away from the usual forms of ceramic works brought me to think about coincidences and serendipitous relationships in our lives. As for my friend, she found Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s work “Clinamen v.9” in the exhibition “Connectivity Construction” to be fascinating, particularly the calming resonance of 180 porcelain bowls floating on water, meeting and departing from each other again and again. We shared a short conversation as we watched: “It’s nice, right?” “Yeah.”

We were also lucky enough to be able to visit the temporarily opened Hanul Madang. It had many visitors, hoping to enjoy a peaceful evening on a spring day. “That’s the Mudeungsan Mountain, right?” My friend pointed to the mountain, which was colored red from the sunset. “So pretty.” Her smile blushed with the same color. The Forest of Light in the ACC was about to be awakened.