Mandy Merzaban: Fake Love & Institutional Longing (BTS)

Mandy Merzaban brings Fake Love & Institutional Longing (BTS) to the John Hansard Gallery on Tuesday 30 June. It's a multimedia poetry project that sits within the gallery's wider Snakes and Ladders (BTS) exhibition, which has been running throughout 2026. Merzaban is a London-based artist and writer, and this piece brings her together with the world of K-pop in a way that's more about cultural history than it is about the music itself.

The project takes its title and a good bit of its starting point from BTS's Fake Love, but it uses that as a springboard to look at orientalism — the way the West has imagined and often distorted the East over centuries. Merzaban tracks how that impulse changes shape over time: from the way it hides in plain sight within contemporary culture and neoliberal institutions, to the love and longing that show up in the diasporic experience. She works those ideas through the 'magnetic aura and the altar' of K-pop, the choreography, and the specific energy of the genre.

Because it's a multimedia poetry project, you're not just reading text on a wall; it's a piece that blends writing with other forms, so it's as much about the experience of it as it is about the words. It's the kind of thing that works best if you're interested in contemporary art, poetry, and cultural studies, and it'll probably land just as well if you've never heard a BTS track in your life as it will if you're already a fan. The whole thing is part of the Snakes and Ladders (BTS) exhibition at the gallery, so it's one piece of a larger show.

It's on at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton on Tuesday 30 June. Entry to the gallery is free, so you can just drop in and see it without booking ahead.