There is a standard iconography in advertising flyers, especially from the world of real estate, that relates to a very specific representation of ideal family life. It’s one that does not seem to change much across continents - in fact, flyers in Seoul are strikingly similar to their western European counterparts, down even to the use of Caucasian models in the photo’s.

Our contribution to the Flyer Project Seoul was to investigate the inconsistencies behind this impression of interchangeability, by using biographical material from our friend and, at the time, expecting mother: Camilla is a textile designer from Denmark, who has been living in the Netherlands for the past eight years. She is Danish, but looks Asian, as she was adopted at an early age in South Korea.

We created a fictional biography, loosely based on her story, that centered around issues of difference, rolemodels and cultural identity, and sent this along with family album snapshots to Seoul. Instead of designing a flyer ourselves, we asked a local printing company to apply one of their standard ready-made templates to the material.

Camouflaged in this way as one of the regular advertisements, the flyer was then distributed by the thousands, folded inside the daily newspaper of Seoul.

Exhibition space