Client
Belóved Gallery
Location
Seoul, South Korea
Collaborators
Belóved Gallery, SaRang Church, World Evangelical Alliance, Akiane Kramarik
Sector
Cultural Institutions & Museums
Services Provided:
Story
Voice, Tone, Accessibility & Localization
Design
Experience Design
Exhibition Design
Interior Design
Immersive Media Design
Interaction & UX Design
Technology
Immersive Media & Projection Mapping
Delivery
Technical Direction & Production Management
Based on fine artist Akiane Kramarik’s visionary works, Akiane: A Journey of Faith through Art is a touring, immersive exhibition launching its first international edition in Seoul.
As exhibition designers Journey was engaged to translate Akiane’s masterworks into an immersive experience at both intimate and architectural scale. We integrated projection mapping, lighting, spatial sound, and physical design to shape a visitor journey that enhances Akaine’s paintings into an all-encompassing encounter with art and faith. This first stop establishes a touring model that will carry the experience to new cities and audiences in the years ahead.
SaRang Church, (Seoul’s largest) hosts the exhibition in Gangnam with a full gallery floor and an outdoor plaza for public programming. The church regularly commissions non-traditional art, making it an ideal setting for this contemporary faith-and-art experience.
The key to building an artist-led experience is to understand the artist’s intent, the audience, and the site context, then using technology in service of the story.
That’s how we approached the exhibition, keeping art at the center, then designing a clear, bilingual visitor journey around that, supporting reflection for everyone, from Christians to the simply curious.
The experience opens with a short orientation that explains the exhibition’s purpose and how to navigate it. Visitors move into the early-life context that establishes Akiane’s origin story and her early recognition.
Galleries are organized by theme and period to establish a clear narrative thread through the work and its ideas. At the center sits an immersive film that brings key paintings to life through voice, poetry, motion, and score.
From there, visitors enter a reverent gallery of luminous, hand-embellished giclée canvases, including Prince of Peace, Jesus: The Missing Years, Dreams, Father Forgive Them, and Jesus, presented for close viewing.
The route concludes in a quiet space for reflection and prayer. Exiting the plaza, an immense LED presentation scales the artwork for the Gangnam streetscape, allowing passersby to also encounter the work.
Our brief was to retrofit and adapt the exhibition to the SaRang Church gallery floor and plaza. We integrated projection mapping, spatial sound, and architectural lighting, and established clear circulation routes with full Korean and English translations to make the exhibit accessible to as broad an audience as possible.
We designed a bilingual typography system, labels, and wayfinding so information is easy to read at a glance for visitors of all ages. This applies in the media itself, where subtitles and captions support both first-time visitors and regular museum and church audiences.
This exhibition demonstrates how an immersive, touring format can preserve an artist’s intent while opening new points of entry. By translating Akiane’s work into spatial and media-rich moments, it reaches audiences who might not visit a gallery and gives existing admirers a deeper encounter with their faith. As the tour moves to new cities, this approach provides a repeatable blueprint for extending the artist’s practice into new cultural contexts, the world over.
Results
1m +
Projected visitors