Unfinished Business: Transforming a Korean Grocery into a Community Hub

Jean Shin will transform her family’s closing grocery store in Washington DC into a temporary cultural hub and artistic installation honoring the Korean American business community’s contributions to the city’s cultural landscape. This corner market thrived for decades in a predominantly Black neighborhood northeast of the Capital—a site where the artist’s parents’ livelihood embodied the complex interplay between Korean shopkeepers and Black residents. While tensions reflecting broader socioeconomic inequities existed, equally significant were untold stories of connection forged through daily interactions. As the store’s lease terminates amid aggressive gentrification, this intervention reimagines this commercial space as a catalyst for public engagement, intergenerational dialogue, and cultural preservation during its two-month installation. The grocery store itself becomes the artistic medium, with its architecture transformed into a multisensory, living monument.

The exterior storefront will showcase portraits of Korean business owners alongside excerpts from their oral histories, while hand-painted billboards illuminate parallel narratives of displacement in Korean and African diasporic communities. Inside, empty shelves become platforms for archival photographs, weathered receipts, lottery tickets, handwritten notes, and everyday objects revealing the lived experiences of Korean shopkeepers. Former advertisement signs, once promoting daily specials, now serve as illuminated memorials layered with family photos, ritual objects, and testimonies from both business owners and longtime residents. The sensory experience immerses visitors in aromas of kimchi, garlic, and sesame oil from cooking stations where Korean pajeon sizzle for communal sharing. Cardboard produce boxes, reconfigured with custom-designed cushions, create gathering spaces throughout. The checkout counter, previously a transactional barrier, houses recording equipment for ongoing oral histories, with headphones providing access to an audio archive while cash drawers distribute printed excerpts of community stories. Shin’s methodology interweaves ancestral Korean traditions of communal food preparation with rigorous decade-long research practices. Collaborating with local universities, the project will gather interviews with transcriptions in multiple languages. Strategic partnerships will create spaces of belonging for Korean diaspora members and underserved communities typically excluded from conventional art spaces.

The transformation from commercial to non-transactional space employs diverse techniques: sculptural assemblages repurposing store fixtures, mappings of historical footage, and installations amplifying community voices. Every surface becomes a storytelling medium—cartographic installations track the disappearance of immigrant-owned businesses, while handcrafted signage transforms material remnants of commerce into artistic expressions. Visitors engage through weekly dumpling-making workshops where conversations unfold over shared tasks, traditional kimchi fermentation sessions led by Korean elders, and community meals featuring authentic Korean cuisine. This project operates at the intersection of public art, community archiving, and social practice. By transforming this corner grocery into a gathering space centered on collective care rather than commerce, Shin creates a temporary monument to the “unfinished business” of reconciliation, remembrance, and healing through the profound act of breaking bread together.