'Useless' Discarded Cardboard Becomes Memories of the City

ACC Holds Yang Nahee's Solo Exhibition "Useless but Beautiful"

Redevelopment Areas, Hillside Villages, and Old Alleyways Reimagined Through Relief Paintings

The Asia Culture Center (ACC) will hold a solo exhibition by artist Yang Nahee, who reconstructs disappearing urban landscapes using discarded corrugated cardboard.

Star Poem, 2020, Oil on Corrugated Relief, 65.1×90.9cm. ACC

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism's Asia Culture Center announced on June 17 that it will host the third exhibition of the '2026 ACC NEWST' series, titled 'Useless but Beautiful', at Exhibition Hall 7 of the ACC Creation Hall from June 18 to July 19.

The exhibition will feature around 20 works by Yang Nahee, an artist who has been active mainly in the Gwangju and Jeonnam regions. Using discarded corrugated cardboard as her primary material, Yang has reimagined rapidly disappearing urban spaces and habitats—such as redevelopment areas, hillside villages, and old alleyways—through relief paintings.

The artist transforms cardboard, discarded after use as packaging, by cutting, layering, attaching, and coloring it, creating structural elements that make up urban scenes such as houses, alleys, hills, windows, and roofs. The grain, tears, color, and thickness of the cardboard serve as devices within the artwork to reveal the layers of time and the expressions of the city.

Yang Nahee was inspired to use cardboard as an artistic medium by a scene she encountered in a redevelopment district in Gwangju. Watching an elderly person carrying waste paper on a cart, she felt that within the single-use, discarded cardboard was a condensed cross-section of the city and society. For the artist, cardboard is not merely waste, but a trace left behind after consumption and a material that evokes those pushed aside by the flow of development and capital.

The exhibition's title, 'Useless but Beautiful', encapsulates Yang’s ongoing inquiry into the ideas of 'utility' and 'value'. The exhibition invites viewers to reconsider the rapidly vanishing urban landscapes, and it prompts reflection on the meaning of forgotten places of life and memory.

Haedongnae, 2022, Oil on corrugated cardboard bas-relief, 95.6×51.8cm. ACC

'ACC NEWST' is a program created by the ACC to support the creative activities of artists from the Gwangju and Jeonnam regions and to expand exhibition opportunities. This year, four teams comprising five artists—Lee Jeonggi, Seo Younggi, Yang Nahee, and Lim Soobum & Ha Seungwan—were selected through a regional artist open call, and their exhibitions have been taking place sequentially from March to August.

Yang Nahee received the 26th Gwangju Art Award in 2020 and has continued her artistic career through events such as the 'Young Artist of the Year Exhibition' and the 'Connecting' exhibition, the latter being part of the Herstory Project Exhibition Competition.

Kim Sangwook, Director of the Asia Culture Center, stated, "The artist has delicately revived traces of time and life in the city through the everyday material of discarded cardboard. I hope this exhibition becomes an opportunity for visitors to discover new value in the seemingly insignificant things around us."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.