Seihee Cho
Interview with the artist based in London, UK. Her works operate as milestones, bridges, satellites, buoys, anchors, and temporary shelters.
Seihee Cho lives and works in London. She recently completed her studies in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art and holds a BA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts. Her work reflects the dissonance of navigating the world, while suggesting that tension itself can become an anchor. The works operate as milestones, bridges, satellites, buoys, anchors, and temporary shelters. As she describes them, they are “repeated gestures of sending out skipping stones or signals to find comfort within flux—or vice versa— creating psychological refuges where motion subsides.”
Website: www.choseihee.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/choseihee
Seihee Cho was recommended by Aura Sun (click here for the interview with Aura Sun).
What guides your artistic research?
I often return to sleep and find myself reentering the same dream over and over again. There is a disorienting continuity between waking and dreaming—unsettling yet familiar—that blurs the boundary between what is real and what is imagined. Reflecting on the memories of twelve different places I’ve called home over the past decade, this sensation feels uncannily similar to drifting in and out of dreams. My past and its presence feel both vivid and faint, as if remembered through fog. The more I try to conjure these experiences, the more they dissolve. Fragmented, yet stubbornly there.
This sensation draws on the Gestaltzerfall effect, a phenomenon in which repetition causes perception to break down. Like a word repeated until it loses meaning, memories, too, begin to disintegrate under excessive scrutiny. My practice stems from this recurring drift between states. Waking and dreaming, presence and absence, the remembered and the forgotten. As a result, the idea of “home” has become less a fixed location and more a condition that flickers in and out of clarity.
On another note, I am constantly sketching. Drawing is the one thing I’m never afraid to simply do. These drawings eventually take the form of sculptures, large-scale installations, writing, images, videos and research. They function as speculative blueprints, while the objects become their tangible manifestations. This reciprocal relationship is not only formal but conceptual, reflecting place-making as a personal and often precarious act.
What are you working on right now?
I’ve been looking at chimneys a lot recently—to the point where I instinctively photograph every one I see, and friends and family now send me images when they come across one. I’m drawn to the idea that they function as exits for air, fumes, and atmosphere from interior spaces, but can also be read as entrances. London has many of them due to the age of its buildings, and they often appear in clusters. That grouping feels important, suggesting a collective outline of lived space rather than a single interior. I think of chimneys as quiet witnesses to habitation. They imply warmth, breath, and residue, but only indirectly—through what escapes and disperses.
What are your favourite items in your studio?
At the moment, it’s Eva Hesse’s Diaries. I return to it whenever I feel the need to have a quiet conversation with someone. No matter how many times I’ve read it, there’s always something new to discover. It grounds me and helps bring me back into focus; Or sometimes does the opposite. I think being unfocused is often fine, even crucial. More recently, I was gifted a new pair of winter studio slippers. They’ve become my next favourite thing.
What inspired you recently?
I’ve been listening to a lot of Lelio Luttazzi’s albums. Many of my recent drawings and sculptures were made listening to his music. Even as I’m writing this, I have Mi piace playing. His music sits in a space that’s not quite happy but not quite sad either, and I feel there is a connection with that emotional register and my visual language.
What was the last thing that made you laugh out loud?
My dad built a small Finnish sauna at home recently. I facetimed them this morning and they were in the sauna with funny looking hats. I asked them what the hats are for and they told me they are specific sauna hats to prevent hair loss from the heat. Seeing them made me laugh; Took some screenshots too.
