How to Drive Home
About the Project
2025 Mohn LAND Grant recipient Woohee Cho will stage his performance How to Drive Home at Koreatown Plaza this November. The performance traces the housing histories of Cho’s two former roommates, Jisoo and Jin—fellow Korean immigrant artists currently based in Los Angeles. Like Cho, their housing experiences are deeply entangled with their diasporic journeys and the precarity that comes with navigating the process of finding a sense of belonging in Los Angeles.
To produce the score for the musical performance, the artist drove with each of the roommates to their former residences, interviewing them along the way about what life was like during the first years of their immigration to Los Angeles, and relating how housing and visa constraints shaped their day-to-day lives. These conversations were recorded, and Cho worked with two musicians to transform this recorded material into a loosely structured musical score. This score will serve as the basis for a live performance at Koreatown Plaza with Liang and gamin, who will each play instruments including the 생황 (Saenghwang) and 피리 (Piri) and perform choreographed movements. Additionally, Cho will be live translating the recording while using domestic items left by former roommates in his residences to make sounds relating to the narratives.
The live performance will take place in the central area of Koreatown Plaza on November 1, at 5:30PM. Koreatown Plaza (formerly Olympic Plaza) has been a hub in Los Angeles—its shops, restaurants, grocery store, and famed food court have served the Korean and Korean American community since 1988. The central atrium of this vibrant marketplace will host Cho’s performance, which will use its three-story LED screen to project images of Jisoo and Jin’s trajectory as told through their housing arrangements in Los Angeles.
A moderated conversation with the artists and musicians will follow the performance. This portion of the event is presented in collaboration with GYOPO.
About the Artist
Woohee Cho is a visual artist based in Los Angeles and Seoul. His work focuses on moments in everyday life where individual identity collides with or is subsumed by society, queering these experiences through installation, video, and performance. He has held solo exhibitions at Post Territory Ujeongguk, Seoul (2023). His works have been shown at Vox Populi, Philadelphia (2025); Human Resources, LA (2024); Brussels Independent Film Festival (2022); Ann Arbor Film Festival (2021); Cork International Film Festival, Ireland (2021); OUTFEST Film Festival, Los Angeles (2021); Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (2020); and Roy Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT) (2019), among others. He has been awarded artist residencies at the Alex Brown Foundation, Des Moines (2024); NARS Foundation, Brooklyn (2023); The REEF, Los Angeles (2020–2021); and Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art, NYC (2019). He has also received grants, including the Visual Arts Fellowship from the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture (2023); and the Body and Tech Fellowship from The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at CalArts, Valencia (2019).
Credits & Support
How to Drive Home is commissioned by Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) and organized by Bryan Barcena and Irina Gusin, LAND curators-at-large.
This project is funded through the Mohn LAND Grants established by Pamela and Jarl Mohn. The initiative provides Los Angeles-based artists resources and support to present site-responsive, transdisciplinary work across Los Angeles County.
LAND’s 2025 projects are made possible with lead support from the Offield Family Foundation, the Jerry and Terri Kohl Family Foundation, and The Perenchio Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Fran and Ray Stark Foundation, Ben Weyerhaeuser, Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture, Brenda Potter, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and LAND’s Nomadic Council.
Commissions by LAND are supported by the LAND Artist Fund with major funding provided by Karyn Kohl. Generous funding is provided by Berry Stein and The Goodman Family Foundation.
LAND is a member of and supported by the Los Angeles Visual Arts (LAVA) Coalition.
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Graphic by Jimena Gamio.