Hijo Nam

From December 2 to 7, 2025, Space 776 will present a focused exhibition of works by Hijo Nam at the SCOPE Miami Art Fair in Miami Beach. This presentation extends the narrative developed in her recent solo exhibition while shifting attention toward a deeper exploration of origin, memory, and the inherited structures that sustain human life across generations. At SCOPE, Nam brings together her bamboo installation with a selection of fabric and oil works, creating a cohesive environment where material, memory, and philosophy intersect.

At the center of the presentation stands Nam’s bamboo installation, a work rooted in her personal history. The artist’s father spent his life cultivating bamboo and crafting objects from it to support his family. This quiet and continuous labor—marked by devotion, sacrifice, and love—forms the emotional ground of the installation. The charred bamboo used in the work bears the traces of time and endurance; the burn marks serve as both a scar and a testimony, revealing the effort and unseen care that shaped a family’s survival.

Bamboo itself becomes a symbolic language. It grows underground for an extended period,

developing an invisible root system before emerging above the surface in a rapid burst of vertical growth. This rhythm of hidden patience followed by sudden vitality mirrors the human condition: endurance, sacrifice, and renewal. Through this material, Nam offers a meditation on the forces that allow life to continue even when they remain unseen.

Complementing the installation, Nam’s fabric works recall processes of cutting, stitching, layering, and mending—gestures that echo emotional continuity, inherited memory, and the suturing of past and present. Her oil paintings, built through accumulated traces and layered color, evoke atmospheric states that correspond to collective memory and psychological depth. Together, these forms establish a flow between verticality, texture, and rhythm, creating an environment that guides viewers into a contemplation of origin, lineage, and the cycles that shape existence.

Within the visually charged atmosphere of SCOPE Miami, Nam’s presentation introduces a different form of intensity—one grounded in quiet resonance rather than spectacle. Her works ask an enduring yet straightforward question:

“What has allowed us to grow?”
 

The answer unfolds through bamboo’s rising form, the marks of time burned into its surface, and the layers of fabric and paint that extend this narrative into emotional and spiritual space. In bringing these elements together, Nam transforms the fair booth into a site of remembrance, grounding, and renewal.