Final Semester

2024-Ongoing

The Final Semester series is a photographic work that documents closed university campuses.

Beyond the landscape of educational facilities that have lost their function, this series traces, through space, the collective desires that Korean society has built through the institution of the university and the process of their collapse. In particular, taking as a starting point the unique Korean characteristic of an exceptionally high proportion of private universities compared to other countries, it visually reveals how universities rapidly expanded and how an era came to an end.

Following the IMF financial crisis in the late 1990s, university enrollment was perceived not merely as a personal choice, but as a primary pathway to acquiring social status and a stable future. A university diploma became a symbol of potential employment and social mobility, and universities functioned as a relatively secure safety net within an unstable social structure. In this atmosphere, universities were established competitively, with numerous private institutions springing up rapidly, particularly in small provincial cities. Campuses were presented as symbols of regional development, population influx, and future growth, and the very existence of a university was regarded as a guarantee of the region's sustainability. However, in the present era, the rapid decline in the school-age population has become a structural reality rather than a temporary phenomenon; coupled with an overall population decrease, this has led to the problem of the extinction of small provincial cities. Universities that once promised a bright future faced financial limitations as they could no longer recruit students, ultimately leading to closure. In this process, universities gradually lost their functionality, and campuses were left in a state of sudden halt, without any sense of closure.

In the campus depicted in the photograph, structures designed under the premise of the university system—such as classrooms, laboratories, hallways, bulletin boards, slogans, and furniture arrangements—remain intact. However, the students and faculty who once operated these spaces have vanished, and time appears frozen, seemingly stuck at a specific point in time. This place is no longer a venue for learning, nor is it a space of nostalgia that evokes memories of the past. Rather, these campuses are closer to places that physically demonstrate that the social myth—the belief that an individual's future is guaranteed through university admission—is no longer valid.

In this work, the artist does not treat the closed university as a sentimental object or an image of ruin. Rather than evoking personal memories or emotions of loss, the photographs document the state in which the system through which a society has expanded via the institution of the university no longer functions.

The title Final Semester does not signify the end of a semester, but rather refers to the time of an institution that was suspended without transitioning to the next stage. These campuses are not spaces that have naturally vanished, but places left behind having lost their function amidst changes in population structure, policies, and economic conditions, and these photographs visually capture the structural void revealed after the withdrawal.