“I try really hard not to understand what it is I’m doing,” says Neil Wheelock Deforest Smith ’21 (CLAS) of his art gallery, The Hechyeomoyeo, through bites of Burger King chicken nuggets at 12 a.m. Loosely translated from a Korean military command, “hechyeomoyeo” means “from chaos comes order,” fitting for a space dubbed “the living gallery.” Anything but traditional, The Hechyeomoyeo’s exhibits consist of volunteer, uncurated submissions, and you’ll often find artists actively creating during the show, blurring the line between exhibition and studio.

Three months after graduating from UConn Stamford, Smith landed in Seoul to teach at a private school and found it less creative and collaborative than he’d hoped. So he started photocopying students’ homework and drawings, posting the results to Instagram. Little did he know this would get him discovered as more than the self-described “garbage artist,” who painted snails on leftover wood on the streets. In August 2023, he held his first exhibition, featuring 30 artists. Now, The Hechyeomoyeo is heading into its 11th show, this one in Vietnam. Most shows are in Seoul, but the traveling gallery has landed in Thailand and Indonesia, too.

The Hechyeomoyeo is about giving as many people as possible a chance to share their work because, as Smith puts it, “anyone who creates art wants it to be seen.” He’s not trying to reinvent the art scene, just add to its ecosystem by bringing a little organic chaos to Seoul and beyond.