K-pop exhibitions turn fandom into immersive experience

Exhibitions become new fixtures in K-pop promotions for fans to step inside artists’ worlds

Immersive media exhibitions are becoming increasingly common in K-pop promotions, as artists and agencies look for new ways to turn music, visuals and artist narratives into offline fan experiences.

Big Bang’s recent exhibition “Cosmos” is one example.

Inside an underground room in Jung-gu, central Seoul, visitors put on a virtual reality headset to begin their experience. Big Bang members G-Dragon, Taeyang and Daesung begin performing a few steps away and move closer as they sing and rap, creating the illusion of watching the K-pop stars perform in real life.

In addition to VR content, the exhibition also traces the group’s two-decade career through 11 experiential zones, featuring laser shows, previously unreleased photographs, holograms and interactive content.

Exhibitions centered on K-pop artists are nothing new.

In the past, most were organized by fans, particularly around birthdays, anniversaries or comebacks, with fan photographers — often known as “hommas” — displaying photographs they had taken of the artists.

Such exhibitions, however, were necessarily limited in scale and scope, as organizers generally had no access to agency-owned intellectual property, official footage, stage costumes or other archival material.

With direct access to artists’ music, visual archives and intellectual property, agency-backed exhibitions can be larger, more immersive projects incorporating media art, holograms, virtual reality and interactive installations.

Girl group Ive members Yujin and Wonyoung took a similar approach with “An-Young,” a media art exhibition that ran until Sunday in Seongdong-gu, eastern Seoul. The exhibition presented previously unreleased photographs and videos of the pair through LED media art and holograms, while ambient sounds and scents personally selected by the two artists were used throughout the space to extend the experience beyond visuals.

NCT, meanwhile, is marking its 10th anniversary with “Neo Dimension,” which runs until Oct. 18 in Songpa-gu, southern Seoul. The exhibition looks back on NCT’s decadelong expansion across multiple units, music releases and visual content through four-sided video installations and interactive features.

The growing popularity of such exhibitions also comes as the way fans consume K-pop content changes.

“These days a lot of K-pop content seems fast-paced, like short-form videos posted on YouTube or Instagram Reels, and even the songs’ lengths are becoming shorter,” an NCT fan with the surname Jin told The Korea Herald. “Rather than simply looking around the exhibition, looking around an environment constructed around the artist and spending as much time as I’d like there feels like another form of fan experience that lasts longer.”

For agencies, exhibitions serve a promotional purpose.

“Visually striking installations and interactive experiences normally generate photographs and videos that later circulate on social media, extending an offline event back into the digital world,” explained culture critic Jung Duck-hyun. “An idol exhibition can also become a good form of fan service when photographs, information and other materials have been accumulated and curated well.”