Peek into Korea's plan for 2026 Venice Biennale art exhibition

From left, Binna Choi, artistic director of the Korean Pavilion, and artists Choi Goen and Hyeree Ro take part in a press conference at Arko Art Center in Seoul, Thursday, to discuss plans for the Korean Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. Yonhap

In the world of art, the Venice Biennale has long held an unrivaled stature. Dubbed the “Olympics of the art world,” the festival showcases avant-garde, multidisciplinary works that engage with political and cultural issues from across the globe.

Since the opening of the first Korean Pavilion in 1995, Korea has provided more than 20 contemporary artists with a platform to present their ideas to an international audience. Participants have included Lee Wan, siren eun young jung, Hwayeon Nam and Kimsooja.

With the 61st International Art Exhibition scheduled to run from May 9 to Nov. 22, the Arts Council Korea last week unveiled the theme of this year’s Korean Pavilion, along with its two featured artists.

According to artistic director Binna Choi, who will curate the exhibition, the pavilion will transform some of the most turbulent chapters of Korea’s recent political history into a meditation on what “liberation” means in an age of democratic crisis.

Titled “Liberation Space: Fortress and Nest,” the exhibition takes the 2024 martial law crisis as its point of departure, when an emergency decree by then-President Yoon Suk Yeol in December was swiftly blocked by citizens and lawmakers. The episode triggered months of protests, Yoon's impeachment and ultimately the election of a new president.

Rather than presenting a conventional national showcase or a simple gesture against nationalism, Choi said she aims to “reframe the entire pavilion as a monument," offering tools to “fix the nation,” a phrase drawn from protest slogans, through solidarity rather than exclusion.

“The pavilion must become a living ‘liberation space’ where the idea of liberation is continuously redefined,” she said.

Choi’s concept will be realized through the works of sculptor Choi Goen and installation artist Hyeree Ro.

Choi Go-en's "Meridian" / Courtesy of ARKO

Choi Goen

Choi Goen’s project, “Meridian,” will feature industrial copper pipes threaded through and across the pavilion. Likened by the artist to channels through which energy flows within a body, the pipes will puncture walls and floors, connecting interior and exterior spaces.

“I wanted to treat the pavilion as a single body whose blocked acupuncture points could be pierced and unlocked,” Choi said at a press conference, adding that the work is intended to “let circulation and breath return to a place that has also carried the weight of the nation.”

The sculptor, who won the Frieze Seoul Artist Award in 2024, has spent the past decade developing installations that splice, bend and thread industrial plumbing materials through architectural spaces, treating buildings as bodies whose hidden circulatory systems can be exposed and reconfigured.

Ro Hye-ree's "Bearing" / Courtesy of ARKO

Hyeree Ro

If Choi’s intervention evokes the idea of a fortress, Hyeree Ro’s installation “Bearing” is its nest-like counterpart.

Working at the intersection of sculpture and narrative performance, Ro uses fragile materials and fragmented storytelling to explore how personal memory, migration and family histories intersect with broader social and political contexts. For the pavilion, she plans to envelop the interior with some 4,000 pieces of organza — a thin, translucent fabric — and organize eight thematic stations centered on mourning, memory, outlook and everyday life.

Nobel laureate Han Kang's installation, titled "Funeral," on display at Carnegie International in 2018 / Captured from han-kang.net

The “mourning” section will feature an installation by Nobel laureate Han Kang. Titled “Funeral,” the work was first unveiled at the 2018 Carnegie International, a contemporary art exhibition in the United States.

Depicting a field of stark black trees set against a white landscape, the installation mourns the victims of the Jeju April 3 Uprising, with each "tree" representing a life lost. The idea is said to have come to Han in a dream, later becoming a motif in her novel “We Do Not Part” (2021).

Beyond the two featured artists, the pavilion will expand through a fellowship program bringing together artists and writers, including farmer-activist Kim Hu-ju, musician-writer Lee Lang, photographer Yezoi Hwang and artist Christian Nyampeta.

Their contributions will engage with key historical flashpoints, from the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement and the Jeju April 3 Uprising to the candlelight protests and impeachment rallies that led to the downfall of the Yoon administration.

The Korean Pavilion will also feature an unprecedented collaboration with the neighboring Japanese Pavilion, with artists and curators from both countries organizing joint programs in Venice.