Someone jolts awake from a nap and, still half-asleep, knocks over a cup of coffee left on the desk. But here, dozing off for a moment or spilling coffee is perfectly fine. This is Ilwoo Space on the ground floor of the Hanjin Group headquarters in Seosomun-dong, Jung-gu, Seoul, where "Nap," a solo exhibition by Nam Hwayeon, 47, the first winner of the Ilwoo Art Award, is now on view.
Someone really is sleeping. In the performance piece "Sleep, Alone and Together," at least one and up to three performers stay in the gallery each day, settling in for a nap. There are no set movements. They lean into a corner, sit and slump over a table, or lie on the floor and drift off. The sleeping body itself becomes the artwork. No one is forced to sleep — performers may read or simply idle. As the performers change, so does the scene of the exhibition. Visitors, too, are invited to join in. The artist, whom this reporter met at the gallery, said, "It's fine to stop by to see the show and take a short nap before you go."
The soft carpet covering the entire floor is a gentle pink, well suited to falling asleep. The music, too, is dreamlike, like a lullaby. Five round tables, a pot holding a dead plant, a reception desk with copy paper on top, and a wall clock — the entire space is composed as a conceptual installation titled "Late Flash." The wall clock is stopped at 1:46. The time signifies the peak of a post-lunch blood-sugar spike, when the temptation to nap is greatest. One tablecloth is covered in yellowish stains, made by pouring Americano coffee over a bed sheet. "Using coffee to stay alert and boost productivity ultimately puts pressure on our bodies," the artist said. "By pouring the coffee out rather than drinking it, I wanted to let people step back and look at the daily effort to force themselves awake." She added that visitors may pour their own coffee to add further stains.
Earlier works have also been brought back. The photographic piece "Ant Time" (2014) traces the path of a single ant, recording its movement with a 90-centimeter length of thread. An ant's time is quite different from human time, lived by the minute and the second. As a new work for this exhibition, the entire plot of ground where "Ant Time" was made was cast in plaster and placed throughout the gallery.
"Doesn't the pace of the city oppress the body and force us to do more, faster?" the artist said. "We seem to have forgotten our natural rhythm — going out to work when the sun rises, napping when the body asks for it, and returning home as the sun sets. 'Nap' is like a 'voluntary pause,' briefly stopping the day's routine to recover one's own rhythm."
In the video "Like the Future" (2026), a command to get up now and walk quickly repeats over and over. On screen, a block of ice melts endlessly until it loses its form. Kim Sung-woo, the curator at Primary Practice who organized the exhibition, offered this assessment: "A body sunk in a nap slips briefly out of production time, but at the same time it turns toward biological rhythms and natural time, toward an unreachable past and an unrealized future. Through this, time is felt not as a linear flow moving forward, but as a different rhythm of life — one that can stop, turn back and at times do nothing at all."
Nam Hwayeon majored in art at Cornell University in the United States, studied in the Department of Fine Arts at the Korea National University of Arts, and completed a master's program at HZT Berlin, an inter-university center for dance. In 2019, she took part in the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Her solo exhibitions include "Currents of the Mind" at Art Sonje Center (2020) and "Gabriel" at Atelier Hermès (2022).
The Ilwoo Foundation, an affiliate of Hanjin Group, established the Ilwoo Photography Award in 2009 — named after the pen name of late former Chairman Cho Yang-ho (1949–2019) — and had long supported photographers before expanding and renaming it the Ilwoo Art Award in 2024. Nam Hwayeon is the first winner of the newly reorganized Ilwoo Art Award, followed by Ahn Jung-ju last year and Yoi this year. Fourteen video and sculpture works by Nam, including new pieces, can be seen free of charge through September 30.
