if not here where

• Dates: Thurs 23 July - Tues 20 Oct 2026
• Opening times: Weekdays 10am-4pm
• Closing event - Performance and Artist talk: Monday 19 Oct 2026

How do we reflect the systemic conditions of one's life sustained by violating another life elsewhere? Youngsook Choi's exhibition, if not here where explores the interconnected grief of ecological loss across different geographies and from interspecies perspectives. Two works are shown. All That Burnt All That Glow (2025) is a poetic video essay, composed of Youngsook’s site-specific ritual performance for the Brent Reservoir. The reservoir was originally built to supply water to the Grand Union Canal when it served as a vital route to transport coal from Northern England to the South and the capital. Now surrounded by green paths, the reservoir is home to sailing communities. Sailing is intimately entangled with the history of colonial expeditions, just as coal is. Engaging local sailors in a water-bound performance, All That Burnt All That Glow holds space for the geological wounds, attached hard labour, mourning voices for remembrance and healing, and the smoky declaration of climate emergency.

Similarly, connecting mines and waterscape, Larut's Tears (2023-6) speculates on diasporic narratives of the elephant communities displaced from the ancient forest. With the story of reconciliation and interspecies camaraderie, the displayed zine includes a portrait of a rescued elephant, overlaid with a map of the Taiping hydro-sphere in Malaysia, where aggressive tin dredging under British colonial rule permanently left hundreds of man-made lakes.

About the Artist

Youngsook Choi's socially engaged, site-specific practice explores intimate aesthetics of solidarity, postulating feeling and compassion as fundamental ways of knowing. Ecological grief is central to her work. Mobilising collective witnessing as a socio-political autopsy and building eco-literacy as an emergent pedagogy, Youngsook’s ongoing body of work, In Every Bite of the Emperor (since 2021), interweaves transnational narratives of ecological loss across the Northern UK, Malaysian Rainforest and Central Vietnam.

Youngsook is the founder of the transnational eco-grief council ‘Foreshadowing’ and a member of the Centre for Art and Ecology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Youngsook's works have been supported internationally. Amongst them are Arts Catalyst, Asia-Art-Activism, Barbican Centre, Brent Biennial 2025, Camden Arts Centre, Estuary Festival 2025, FACT Liverpool, Lancaster Arts, Liverpool Biennial 2021, Tate Modern, Up Projects, and multiyear support from Heart of Glass in the UK; ARKO Art Center, Busan Biennale 2024, Seoul Media City Biennale 2023, Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul Museum of Art in Korea; Documenta 15 in Germany; Gerimis in Malaysia; Á Space and AIR Hue in Vietnam.