The Busan Museum of Contemporary Art (Busan MoCA) is hosting its first-ever barrier-free exhibition. The title《Seeing with Ten Fingers》derives from the metaphor that ten fingers can become new eyes through which to sense the world. It suggests that the world cannot be fully comprehended by vision alone, but must also be re-experienced through touch, hearing, the skin, and memory.

This exhibition is not simply “for people with disabilities,” but rather a platform that explores how individuals living under different conditions can empathize and exchange through the language of art.


 
Barrier-Free: A New Agenda in Contemporary Art

Barrier-free originally referred to a social movement aimed at removing physical and institutional barriers for the elderly and disabled. Today, in the context of contemporary art, it has grown into a crucial agenda that embodies the values of inclusion, coexistence, and expanded sensory experience.
 
《Seeing with Ten Fingers》is significant precisely in this respect. Visitors encounter experiences that transcend the visual: feeling warmth through touch, drawing unseen images through hearing, and connecting to others’ experiences through memory and emotion. Art here becomes not merely a visual object but a medium for mutual understanding and exchange across difference.
 


20 Artists, 70 Works Expanding the Senses

The exhibition features more than 70 works by 20 artists from Korea and abroad, both disabled and non-disabled. Each transforms their own sensory limitations and bodily conditions into artistic language, discovering new possibilities within constraint.

Kim Deok-hee’s large-scale installations Song of the Night and White Voices use paraffin and temperature-sensitive hand sculptures to awaken tactile empathy. The subtle warmth transmitted when holding a hand transforms the work into a medium of communion rather than a mere object.

Robert Morris, the American minimalist master, presents Blind Time, created by moving his hands while blindfolded. The absence of sight enables the expansion of other senses, experimenting with “ways of perceiving without seeing.”

Raumkon (Song Ji-eun)’s One Hand Project transforms utensils adapted after a cerebral hemorrhage into sculptural objects. Everyday items such as spoons and clips become creative extensions of the body, proving that restriction can generate new creation.

Emily Luis Gossiaux’s Family Archive, created after losing her sight, reconstructs a sensory system through sculpture and painting. The work invites viewers to “touch” unseen images, exploring the intersection of memory and sensation.

Shiratori Kenji and Korean artist Jung Yeon-doo, combines blurred photographs with jazz music. The dissonance between sight and sound destabilizes familiar sensory hierarchies, challenging conventional “normal” perception.

Other works such as Eom Jung-soon’s For Your Eyes and Kim Chae-rin’s One in 27 Voices interweave vision, touch, and hearing, guiding audiences toward new forms of perception.
 


Works Born of Community Collaboration

Another distinctive aspect of this exhibition lies in its community-based creation process. It builds on six projects organized in 2024 with disability and non-disability communities.

Among them, Hong Bo-mi’s Slowly, Closely—a comic-style book produced with low-vision students from Busan Blind School—captures their museum visit experience. It demonstrates how art can transcend boundaries between disability and non-disability, fostering connection and solidarity.
 
In the gallery, the Sensory Station allows visitors to touch miniatures of works, while barrier-free films and documentaries are screened in the Eulsuk Theater on the basement level. Together, these extend the exhibition into a multi-layered process of learning and empathy, beyond mere viewing.


 
The Contemporary Meaning of Inclusion and Exchange

《Seeing with Ten Fingers》affirms not only the principle that “everyone has the right to experience art,” but also proposes that art can expand perception and open pathways for coexistence among different beings. This reflects an important trajectory of contemporary art.
 
Today, art is becoming a language that transcends social and bodily boundaries, enabling us to empathize with the lives of others through the senses. At its core, 《Seeing with Ten Fingers》re-asks fundamental questions: How do we experience the world, and how does art connect us to one another?
 


Exhibition Information
Title: 《Seeing with Ten Fingers》
Duration: Through September 7, 2025
Venue: Busan Museum of Contemporary Art
Admission: Free
Programs: Barrier-free films and documentaries at the Eulsuk Theater (see Busan MoCA website for details)

References

• Busan Musem of Contemporary Art