THE WOMAN WHO BECAME A ROAD / Hyeyeon Cho
The Road Beneath Us
Mixed fabrics (cotton, silk, canvas, felt), 7.5 metres
The Road Beneath Us is a textile-based landscape that transforms roads into vessels of memory, identity, and resistance. Using autobiographical fragments and collage techniques, the artist constructs a layered path that speaks to personal and political displacement.
This is not just a surface to walk on, but a terrain of lived histories—woven with questions of migration, class, gender, and cultural heritage. The installation asks: who moves freely, and who is stopped? Whose journeys are seen, and whose are silenced?
Through its tactile, immersive form, the work invites emotional connection while resisting simplified narratives. It challenges the idea of a ‘universal path,’ instead revealing a cityscape shaped by fragmentation and resilience.
In a time of division and forced movement, The Road Beneath Me quietly reclaims space—offering a call for empathy, recognition, and collective belonging.
The Woman Who Became a Road
B&W Film and Sound / 6 mins
The Woman Who Became a Road explores the psychological and emotional exchanges that take place within broader social and political contexts. Viewing the city as an “extended space,” the film reflects on how emotional, political, and social interactions can often lead to feelings of fatigue, deprivation, and alienation.
The project originates in the artist’s personal experience of relocating from Korea to London, which shaped their perspective on urban life.
How do individuals navigate feelings of alienation, fatigue, and deprivation in such a vast environment? Is it possible to achieve an “ideal psychological state” by setting aside political and social influences as a means to escape these emotions?
At the heart of the work is the concept of the “road.” Roads exist both within and beyond cities, symbolising spaces of human interaction. They serve as a powerful metaphor for psychological and physical contact, exchange, and connection.
Through personal experiences and encounters along the road, the artist reflects on urban life. The work reveals not only the hardships of deprivation, fatigue, and alienation but also invites reflection on the complex and intertwined nature of human experience within the urban environment.
Process video