The Unaffordable Nostalgia, presented by the Korean Cultural Center in Hong Kong, runs from 20 August to 7 November 2026. The exhibition features works by Korean artists Ubac Studio and Jang Gayoun, together with the Hong Kong-based collective Foreseen Agency. It is co-curated by Kang Min-hyung and Wong Ka Ying. The exhibition explores urban development, memory, historical context, and the contemporary urban experience shaped by modern society. Through the cities of Seoul and Hong Kong, it offers new perspectives on how memory and nostalgia are constructed, circulated, and consumed.

Unaffordable Nostalgia asks what is preserved and what is erased in the process of reproducing and consuming spaces and memories that no longer exist. Examining traces left by digital platforms and urban development, the exhibition investigates how memory has come to function as a form of social and cultural value in the present day.

Ubac Studio examines hidden layers of the city through a cyber-geological approach. Its interactive game Escape Maps combines deleted street-view imagery with de-recorded data filtered out by artificial intelligence. Visitors participate both as active users of the game and as subjects of the platform, experiencing processes of recording, selection, and erasure within urban space.

Hong Kong-based Foreseen Agency reconstructs the pedestrian route leading to PMQ through its work Connected Mosses. Twelve screens installed along a steel staircase connect the repetitive labor of climbing stairs with the seamless convenience of escalator travel as part of a single virtual system. Through the distinctive urban structure of the Mid-Levels district, the work visualizes the social and historical layers embedded in the development and maintenance of urban infrastructure.

In Placeless in the Gyeongseong Era, Jang Gayoun examines how contemporary commercial spaces consume and repackage the past. The work explores the ways in which cultural traces of a particular historical period are reinterpreted and marketed under notions of “retro” aesthetics and sentimental nostalgia, demonstrating how memory is reconstructed within contemporary consumer culture.

The exhibition takes place at PMQ, a historic building formerly used as police married quarters and now one of Hong Kong’s leading arts and cultural destinations. By treating the venue itself as a historical site, the exhibition investigates the point at which the city’s past and present intersect.