We, Such Fragile Beings

PODO Museum (Executive Director, Chloe H. Kim) opens its new exhibition We, Such Fragile Beings on August 9, 2025, running through August 8, 2026. Featuring thirteen contemporary artists from Korea and abroad, including internationally acclaimed figures Mona Hatoum, Jenny Holzer, Liza Lou, and Sarah Sze, the exhibition explores the question: “Why do we, such fragile beings in the vast cosmos, persist in conflict?” and seeks pathways toward empathy, understanding, and coexistence.  

Works by Mona Hatoum, Jenny Holzer, Liza Lou, Annabel Daou, Sumi Kanazawa, Maarten Baas, Sarah Sze, Lee Wan, Boo Jihyun, Kim Hanyoung, Song Dong, Sho Shibuya, Robert Montgomery

Exhibition overview
The exhibition draws from the “Pale Blue Dot” photograph taken by Voyager 1 in 1990, which captured Earth from 6.4 billion kilometers away. This perspective serves as a starting point for examining human relationships and our shared existence on this planet.

The exhibition unfolds across three galleries and two specially designed thematic spaces.

Gallery 1: Temple of Oblivion
The exhibition where works by Mona Hatoum, Jenny Holzer, Liza Lou, and Annabel Daou address themes of conflict displacement, and collective memory. These artists employ materials ranging from concrete and metal to beadwork and text to explore how societies process and repeat patterns of violence.

The gallery opens with works by celebrated artists such as Mona Hatoum, who has exhibited at the Venice Biennale and documenta, and Jenny Holzer, who has spent the past five decades dissecting the language of power. Their works expose the raw face of contemporary society, mired in hatred and division.

Mona Hatoum presents a 1.6-ton concrete mass and rebar suspended in mid-air. The structure appears serene at first glance but conveys an overwhelming sense of precarity. Born into a Palestinian refugee family in Lebanon, Hatoum was unable to return home following the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975. Her work evokes a haunting vision of near-collapse, grounded in personal and political exile.

Jenny Holzer engraves 296 lead and copper plates with texts collected from politically polarizing social media, treating them like archaeological artifacts. The work highlights how we have grown desensitized by the rapid consumption of aggressive and hostile language.

Liza Lou collaborated with Zulu women in South Africa who had experienced racial oppression. Together, they covered the barbed wire that once confined them with millions of tiny beads.

Annabel Daou transcribes everyday language gathered from conversations with citizens onto six meters of microfiber using correction fluid. Her work invokes the fundamental human threads that remain even in a fractured world.   

Gallery 2: Portrait of Time
In Gallery 2, titled Portrait of Time, time is treated as a concrete, visual entity, as if painting a portrait. Through this approach, the exhibition offers a relative and sensory understanding of time.

Four artists explore the essence of time through distinct methods and sensibilities. This includes Sumi Kanazawa, Maarten Baas, Sarah Sze, and Lee Wan. Each reveals subtle characteristics and expressions unique to time, offering new ways of perceiving it. Through their works, visitors encounter the relativity of time and the shared human condition of powerlessness in its presence.

Sumi Kanazawa accumulates the repetition of time as material form by connecting hundreds of newspaper sheets covered in pencil marks to create a curtain-like installation.

Dutch designer and artist Maarten Baas presents a new work created for this exhibition. Depicting laborers endlessly assembling clock hands, the piece reveals how modern individuals are confined within time’s smallest units.

Sarah Sze’s work suggests that while we each lead different lives, the landscapes of the unconscious that unfold in dreams are surprisingly universal.

Lee Wan visualizes the subjective experience of time’s passage through 560 ticking clocks, each moving at a different speed. The work represents the diverse ways time is perceived.

PODO Museum’s Thematic Space
PODO Museum incorporates specially designed thematic spaces into each exhibition to reinforce its core themes. These spaces are conceptualized and produced in-house to enhance the visitor experience.

The first thematic space, Glass Cosmos, is a kinetic installation where hundreds of glass bulbs light up in sequence when visitors breathe into glass objects created by survivors of various forms of violence. This participatory work invites visitors to experience the relationship between individual pain and collective healing.

We are made of star stuff is an immersive installation. Inside a space surrounded by LED displays and mirrors, the Golden Record from Voyager’s 1977 mission plays greetings from humanity in 55 languages. As visitors listen, they see themselves infinitely reflected and gradually diminished in the mirrors, encountering their existence as tiny beings in the universe.

These thematic spaces were conceived by Executive Director Chloe H. Kim and realized through collaboration with specialists across disciplines, including landscape architect Sumu, glass artist Yang Yoowan, programmers Shin Jaeyoung, Ahn Roksu, and Park Jiyeon, and the creative collective NAU.

Gallery 3: Mirror of Memory
Gallery 3, the museum’s final exhibition space, is titled Mirror of Memory. It is organized as a space where memories of past and present, personal and collective, reflect and respond to one another like mirrors. As visitors gaze into these mirrored memories, they encounter a sense of connection at the point where their own recollections meet those of others.

This gallery was developed as part of PODO Museum’s ACA in PODO project, which introduces contemporary Asian artists. Four artists from Korea, China, and Japan—Boo Jihyun, Kim Han Young, Song Dong, and Sho Shibuya—ask the question: “How shall we live, despite everything?”

Boo Jihyun evokes a silent sea using discarded fishing lamps. Kim Han Young builds the weight of time through repeated brushstrokes. Song Dong presents weathered doors salvaged from demolition sites in Beijing, expressing quiet interdependence. Sho Shibuya overlays skies onto pages of daily news, gently covering the day’s headlines.

Through these quiet acts of repetition, the artists reveal the restorative power of the everyday. Together, they deliver a clear message: even in a broken world, beauty still exists, hidden within our modest gaze.

“Love Is the Answer”
The final work of the exhibition is an LED sculpture by Robert Montgomery from PODO Museum’s collection, installed in the outdoor garden. Previously displayed at the Tuileries Garden of the Louvre in 2022, the piece brings the entire journey of the exhibition into focus with a single sentence: “Love is the revolutionary energy that destroys darkness and breaks down the distances between us.”

After traversing the Temple of Oblivion, Portrait of Time, and Mirror of Memory, visitors ultimately arrive at the most ancient and certain answer: love.

“Occasionally contemplating the scale of the universe expands our frame of reference and gives us the power to transcend our daily concerns and problems,” said Chloe H. Kim, Executive Director of PODO Museum. “While this exhibition begins with somewhat heavy and provocative themes, we hope visitors will discover beauty and hopeful messages through the artists’ eyes and experience the transformative journey from violence to healing.”

A new cultural space harmonized with nature
PODO Museum has renovated its surrounding environment to enhance the visitor experience. The addition of grass lawns and outdoor performance spaces in the front and rear gardens has created a tranquil walking path that connects to PODO Hotel. The outdoor garden features sculptures by Robert Montgomery, Ugo Rondinone, and Kim Hongseok. A swing installation by the Danish artist collective SUPERFLEX is also scheduled to be added to the pine forest.

Since opening in 2021, PODO Museum has gained wide public support by presenting weighty social themes such as hatred, minorities, and aging in accessible and empathetic ways. Recognized as a must-visit museum in Jeju, it has been credited with transforming the cultural landscape of the mid-mountain region of Hallasan.

The exhibition runs from August 9, 2025 through August 8, 2026.