Do national labels still matter in contemporary art?

Does it still matter where an artist is from?

It is a question I keep coming back to, even when I know better. Despite years of writing about contemporary art, I still catch myself asking artists and curators some version of this: “What is the Koreanness in your work?” I know it’s a tired and perhaps even reductive question, especially in a global art world that thrives on transnational conversations and hybrid identities. But I ask it anyway. Maybe out of habit. Maybe out of a quiet obsession to trace a thread, to name something uniquely Korean before it disappears into the haze of global aesthetics.

That question feels particularly timely now, as the global art world converges on Seoul this month. September has become the undisputed peak of Korea’s art calendar, with Frieze Seoul and Kiaf Seoul drawing the world’s top gallerists, curators and collectors to the city. Major museums and galleries align their schedules to put forth their most ambitious offerings of the year. The streets buzz with exhibitions, after-hours viewings and parties that stretch into the night.

So, what should you see?

If you want to understand the strength of Korean contemporary art today — especially from artists who have already earned their place in global institutions — three exhibitions stand out. Kimsooja, Lee Bul and Haegue Yang are all mid-career Korean women artists, internationally recognized yet deeply rooted in something Korean.

All three have represented Korea at the Venice Biennale. All three have been selected form National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea’s Hyundai Motor Series, a high-profile program for mid-career artists. Their paths overlap in ways that quietly mark the contours of Korea’s contemporary canon, whether or not we choose to see it as one.

Kimsooja returns to Seoul with “To Breathe — Sunhyewon,” an exhibition staged at the former hanok residence of SK Group’s founder in Samcheong-dong. Known globally for her “Bottari” bundles — fabric-wrapped bundles that reference displacement, migration and memory — Kimsooja brings a quiet, meditative presence to the hanok’s traditional Korean architecture.

She had long envisioned experimenting with hanok, and upon entering Kyongheunggak at Sunhyewon, the idea of a mirror installation became inevitable. The resulting piece invites visitors to become performers within the space, consciously or not, as their movements and reflections activate the work. For Kimsooja, wrapping is not merely a physical act but one embedded with memory.

Meanwhile, Lee first stunned Korea’s art scene in the late 1980s with radical acts of bodily defiance, dangling nude from theater rafters and wandering city streets in grotesque suits. But in “Lee Bul: From 1988 to Now,” a major survey in Korea at the Leeum Museum of Art, the focus shifts to the artist’s later explorations of utopia, failure and modernity.

Her “Mon Grand Recit” sculptures probe the limits of human ambition, while works like “Bunker (M. Bakhtin)” and “Aubade V” root that inquiry in Korea’s tumultuous history. Through these works, Lee’s world expands beyond the autobiographical to interrogate the relationship between humans and technology and the allure of progress. Her recent signing with Hauser & Wirth, making her the first Korean artist to join the mega gallery’s roster, only adds to the sense of global achievement.

Then there is Haegue Yang, who has been one of the most visible Korean artists in overseas institutions over the past decade. Her pop-up show, “Lean Leap Days,” staged in her former studio tucked inside a nondescript office building in Seoul’s Jongno District, is a rare small-scale presentation offering a quieter meditation on materiality, abstraction and ritual, unlike the sprawling installations she is known for.

Through folding, cutting and layering hanji (traditional Korean mulberry paper) alongside other types of paper, Yang creates intricate compositions she describes as multidimensional flatness. These works reflect her ongoing engagement with indigenous and shamanistic practices across cultures, yet suggest a momentary turn inward, a subtle reengagement with something more distinctly Korean.

These exhibitions are not coordinated, yet they feel in conversation. Taken together, they offer a rare opportunity to examine not only the individual careers of three of Korea’s most prominent contemporary artists, but also the institutional scaffolding that has helped shape their ascent — and Korea’s.

Korea’s global art moment didn’t happen by accident. It was built through biennales, museum programs, private foundations and sheer persistence. And as global eyes land on Seoul this month, what they’ll see isn’t just great art by Korean artists. They’ll see how a national scene becomes international, not by erasing identity, but by expanding what it can mean.

Perhaps that’s why I still ask what makes an artwork Korean — not because I expect a definitive answer, but because the question itself reveals something about the force, expectation and history.

I know the question might be flawed. But when I stand inside Kimsooja’s mirrored hanok, walk beneath Lee’s metallic airships or trace the folds of Yang’s cut hanji, I find myself asking it again. Maybe it is not about finding an answer, but about continuing to ask.

Kwon Mee-yoo is editor of the K-Culture Desk at The Korea Times.