"Vestige", Solo exhibition at the Arise Art Space, South Korea | Tim Franco

Photographer Tim Franco opens his solo exhibition “Vestige” at Arise Art Space in Busan (South Korea) on December 6th.

This exhibition is a haunting reflection on memory, loss, and transformation — exploring what remains when a city erases its own past. Bogwang-dong, once a bustling district in the heart of Seoul, now stands empty. Its disappearance is not only physical but emotional — a quiet removal of the city’s memory. The project begins in the space between what was once inhabited and what has been erased, searching for the traces that remain when a neighborhood loses its physical form. Through the transformation of found remnants into new images and objects, the visitors are invited to reflect on how urban memory is built, displaced and rewritten. The act of reclaiming what was left behind becomes a way to resist the clean erasure of redevelopment — a fragile attempt to preserve something that no longer has a place in Seoul’s future.

At the heart of the project lies the question of heritage and continuity; when a city constantly rebuilds itself, what happens to the collective memory that connects its spaces and lives? What is lost when progress demands forgetting, and what does it mean to remember in a place that no longer exists? Finally, the project examines the role of memory within the urban structure — how it shapes a city’s identity and forms part of the cultural heritage shared by its people. By revisiting what has been displaced or erased, it underlines that memory is not a passive trace of the past, but an active foundation for how a community understands itself and its future.

From 6 December to 19 December 2025.
Arise Art Space, 2nd floor, 105, Mangmibeonyeong-ro 52beon-gil, Suyeong-gu, Busan, Republic of Korea

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