Every object has a story

Kwon Keun-young

The author is a staff writer for the JoongAng Ilbo.

With their eyes closed and headphones on, a wooden figure listens to music in utter serenity, resembling a young Buddhist monk or pensive Bodhisattva. This familiar yet novel moktak, or wooden Buddhist percussion instrument, was created by the Finnish Korean design studio Company in collaboration with a moktak artisan in Yeongcheon, North Gyeongsang.

Korea-born Aamu Song and her Finnish h husband Johan Olin, founded the Helsinki-based studio in 2000 and have spent two decades traveling the world and collaborating with local craftspeople.

“I bought a paulownia-wood moktak and tried playing it in Finnish forests and on the streets of Insa-dong,” Song recalled. “After thinking about nothing but moktak, even the headphones that young people wore […] started to look like moktak to me.”

During this time, she began to wonder how the instrument could stand upright for storage, and she and her husband ultimately drew and mailed their sketch of such a version to a young, third-generation moktak maker. They worried that he would respond, “This does not fit with Buddhism.”

They were relieved when he instead replied, “I think that this could actually become a moktak and produce a nice sound.”

The resulting moktak is among the new works in “Company World Affair,” an exhibition at Piknic on Toegye-ro in Jung District, central Seoul, that runs through Sept. 6. The exhibition, spread across the building’s four floors, surveys two decades of Company’s collaborations with artisans around the world.

Song and Olin tracked down makers of objects that caught their eye, often by asking around until they found the source. Even when they did not share a language with the artisans, they drew on graph paper as a means of communication.

At a Russian matryoshka, or nesting doll, workshop, older craftswomen saw Company’s drawings of cabbages, eggplants and whales and remarked, “These designs are so new, yet they somehow feel as if we’ve been making them for 100 years.”

That is Company’s method: carefully adding its imagination to ways of life and craftsmanship handed down over generations to make something new together. Walking through works filling three floors and the rooftop, visitors encounter objects with designs that are inseparable from their makers, journeys and histories. There is hardly an object without a story.

Company has collaborated with international brands such as Marimekko and Hermès. The duo has also received recognition, including a special mention at the Salone del Mobile Milano, a furniture fair in Milan, in 2008 and the Helsinki Design Award in 2018.

But what Song and Olin pursue is less prestige than the small pleasures that ordinary objects can bring. Their work links the histories and cultures of different regions through handmade works.

More than 33,000 people have visited the exhibition over five months. Its appeal may lie in offering an alternative to conventional industrial design, which centers on efficiency and mass production. Instead, Company focuses on the human value and stories embedded in objects and the people who make them. Piknic describes their approach as respecting local materials and techniques passed down through generations while viewing the wisdom within them through a contemporary lens. 

For visitors coming to Korea during Seoul Art Week, centered on the Frieze Seoul art fair, this is an exhibition that I would recommend. After seeing it, cross the street to Namdaemun Market. The countless everyday objects there may suddenly look a little different.