Breaking the Silence

Group Exhibition
2024, Sahngup Gallery, Seoul, Korea

In Itaewon, ecstasy and screams coexist. Foreigners, the LGBTQ+ community, religious figures, schools, clubs, bars, and offices—all these disparate lives and spaces collide in a raucous symphony of existence. Yet Itaewon was once a graveyard. Perhaps that is why this place draws those who yearn to live. Here, the rejected, the castaways, the excluded—those pushed further and further until they have nowhere left to go—seek solace. They find recognition and welcome in each other. At the heart
of this gathering lies the Halloween festival.

Since October 29, 2022, I have wept without apparent reason, often tormented by
guilt. When I close my eyes, I see hundreds of flailing hands, the wail of red ambulances, and soiled white cloth. That night, hesitating in Itaewon Station, I chose the path home instead of taking exit 1. I survived.

The dead do not vanish. They speak through the mouths of the living, even
in death. I longed to record that voice. I took photographs and listened to stories as I faced mortality. As I gathered the victims’ stories, I began to see hope rather than despair. They possessed the strength to dream of tomorrow.

We are stronger than sorrow. We have the power to rise above our grief. In that moment of realization, the reasons for our silence in the face of death dissipated. I wished for us to speak more loudly, sometimes clumsily, of life and death. To unearth the death we had buried beneath the relentless grind of daily life. To weep without restraint. If that could halt the cycle of such deaths, I would believe it to be the greatest tribute I could offer.

A project that interviews and documents through photographs people related to the tragedy that occurred in Itaewon, Seoul, on October 29, 2022.

SOL SHIN