It’s not so often that you encounter contemporary art between bites of a
croissant and sips of an oat flat white. Ding! Creative Corners, the
latest project from 4482 [SASAPARI], pulls art out of the pristine
white cube and into the warmth of three South West London cafés. “Not
the centre. Not the spotlight. But where it all begins,” the
curatorial statement insists. And indeed, something does begin here: a
gentle but persuasive rethinking of where art belongs.
Four emerging Korean artists — Jiyoen Ryu, Sarah Na, Soryun Ahn, and
Sumin An — present paintings, prints, and installations across Café 63
High St., Café Macarong, and Yayhouse. The works speak to themes of
community, local identity, nature, and chance encounters. At Café
Macarong, where the menu itself carries a Korean accent, the artworks
fold into the rhythm of a space already shaped by migration and
memory. At Yayhouse, the dialogue is quieter, more introspective, with
artworks almost camouflaging into corners until a second glance
reveals their quiet insistence.
What makes Creative Corners succeed is not scale or spectacle, but
intimacy. In cafés, audiences are unguarded: notebooks open,
headphones in, conversations flowing. To stumble upon an artwork here
is to meet it in a moment of everyday vulnerability. This setting
grants the works a kind of immediacy rarely found in conventional
galleries.
At the heart of this project is curator Hyeryoung Jun, herself an
immigrant who first came to London from South Korea to study and who is
now carving out her own path in the UK’s competitive art world. Her
vision feels deeply personal: to create spaces where young Korean
artists can be seen and where audiences encounter art without
intimidation. That act of translation — between cultures, between
contexts, between daily life and artistic reflection — is the
exhibition’s most powerful gesture.
For me, as a Mexican living in London, Jun’s project resonates on
another level. There’s a quiet recognition in the way she claims space
for immigrant voices in the city’s cultural landscape. London is a
patchwork of diasporas, each corner shaped by its own stories of
arrival, adaptation, and belonging. Ding! Creative Corners reflects
this reality not with fanfare, but with the simple act of placing art
where people already gather.
Image: Welcome home, 2024, Jiyeon Ryu
The exhibition isn’t without its challenges. By dispersing across
three venues, the narrative coherence of the project occasionally
thins. Each café offers a distinct experience, but taken together, the
show risks feeling fragmented. For those who make the effort to see
all three sites, however, the dispersed format mirrors the mosaic of
immigrant life itself — scattered, sometimes disjointed, but always
interconnected.
Jun frames the project as an effort to give young Korean artists
visibility while easing audiences into contemporary art in familiar
spaces. On that count, it succeeds. Ding! Creative Corners is not a
blockbuster, but it doesn’t need to be. It is a reminder that art
thrives in unexpected places — over coffee, in pauses, in the hum of
daily life.
Verdict: A quietly radical exhibition that rewards attention. For
Londoners weary of gallery formalities, and for those who understand
the work of building a life between cultures, this is contemporary art
at its most approachable.
4482 [SASAPARI], South West London, 29 Sept – 27 Oct 2025
Image top- My home d. Pink 01, 2023, Digital print on paper
