August 30–October 31, 2025
The 2025 Jeonnam International Sumuk Biennale concludes as a global laboratory for ink experiments. “Innovation of Tradition and Expansion of Materiality: Sensing the Identity and Future of Korean Sumuk.”
The 2025 Jeonnam International Sumuk Biennale concluded on October 31 after two months of transforming the skies and seas of southern Korea into shades of ink. More than a visual festival, this year’s edition became a laboratory for dialogue between tradition and contemporaneity, where the spirit of Sumuk was reimagined as a global artistic language.
Under the theme Neighbors of Civilization–Somewhere Over the Yellow Sea, the Biennale gathered 83 artists and collectives from 20 countries, presenting over 300 works that reinterpreted the essence of traditional Sumuk through installation, video, and media art. The exhibition was recognized as a bold attempt to reposition the aesthetics of Sumuk within the discourse of global contemporary art, bridging East and West through a shared material and conceptual vocabulary.
Revisiting tradition, reframing East Asian aesthetics
Rather than preserving tradition as static heritage, the Biennale reframed it as a living medium of experimentation.
At the Mokpo Indoor Gymnasium, installations by Chun Kwangyoung, Marianto, and Whang In-Kie revealed how paper, ink, and digital codes could coevolve into a new sensory form of Sumuk. Meanwhile, the Gosan Yun Seon-do Museum unveiled to the public for the first time the original Washing Horses by the 18th-century master Yun Du-seo (1668–1715)—a historical moment that underscored the Biennale’s dialogue between heritage and contemporaneity.
From seeing to walking: the shift of perception
Viewers described the Biennale as “an experience of pausing to breathe before the painting, to see oneself within the void,” and “not merely watching an image, but walking inside the flow of ink and light.” Such responses reveal how Sumuk has evolved from a visual medium into an immersive, embodied experience. The act of “seeing” transformed into “being within”—a poetic movement from representation toward atmosphere, rhythm, and sensibility.
Sumuk as discourse and knowledge: 2025 Jeonnam International Sumuk Biennale symposium
The international academic symposium, titled “Innovation of Tradition and Expansion of Materiality: The Function of Sumuk in East Asian Contemporary Art,” brought together eight scholars and curators from Korea, China, and Japan to explore how Sumuk continues to evolve as a language of thought and form in contemporary art.
In the first presentation, Jinmyung Lee (Korea, Art critic) delivered a paper titled “The Concept of Gyeomhe and the Aesthetics of East Asia: The Philosophy of Art as a Spiritual Medium of Sumuk.” Lee proposed gyeomhe—humility—as a central aesthetic and ethical principle in East Asian art, emphasizing that the essence of Sumuk lies not in representation but in resonance —a contemplative space where nature and self merge through mutual reflection.
The second presentation, by Du Xiyun (China, independent curator and art critic), was titled “The Same Medium, Different Dreams: The Multiple Dimensions of Ink Painting in Contemporary Chinese Contexts.” Du examined how traditional ink painting in China has transformed within the frameworks of conceptual and material experimentation, suggesting that contemporary ink practices operate as fluid interfaces between tradition and global contemporaneity.
From Japan, art critic Akimoto Yuji presented “The Way of Writing: From Morita Shiryu, Inoue Yuichi, and Ishikawa Kyuyo to Contemporary Artists.” His lecture traced the evolution of calligraphy from linguistic signification to performative and spatial expression, highlighting how postwar and contemporary Japanese calligraphers aligned with global avant-garde movements while retaining the meditative essence of sho.
The final presentation, by Song Hee-kyung (Director, Geomjae Jeongseon Art Museum, Korea), titled “Two Masters of Late Joseon: Gongjae and Geomjae,” offered a comparative reading of two seminal figures in late Joseon painting. Song illuminated how their divergent artistic philosophies embody a uniquely Korean vision of Sumuk—rooted in intellectual discipline, moral reflection, and aesthetic restraint.
Through these presentations, the symposium positioned Sumuk not merely as a technique or medium, but as a conceptual and philosophical framework capable of rethinking temporality, ethics, and materiality within contemporary art. Sumuk emerged as an open epistemology—a mode of seeing and knowing that transcends national, cultural, and generational boundaries.
Complementing this intellectual platform, the Biennale also hosted special lectures for students at Jeonnam National University and Mokpo University, transforming the event into a site of transmission and experimentation for emerging artists and curators who engaged with Sumuk not as a relic of tradition but as a living, evolving language of creation.
From the local to the global
Anchored in the aesthetic traditions of the Namdo region, the 2025 Biennale pursued the vision of “Drawing a New Center of the World through Sumuk.” It demonstrated that Sumuk—once confined to the realm of ink and brush—can serve as a transcultural platform that connects Korea, Asia, and the world. In doing so, the Biennale positioned Sumuk not as a remnant of the past, but as a language of the future—one that embodies delayed modernities, plural temporalities, and renewed forms of sensibility.
The 2025 Jeonnam International Sumuk Biennale ultimately affirmed that the ancient art of ink can still ask the most contemporary of questions: How can we inherit tradition while imagining the future? And how can the flow of ink cross borders, times, and civilizations to draw a new world of relation?
