This year’s edition of the Venice Biennale has been marked by protests over the continued participation of states accused of violating international law and by a corresponding—if not new—debate around the very model of national pavilions.
Much of that debate comes from countries that have within the lifetime of the Venice Biennale been forced to give up their own empires. The continued desire of postcolonial countries to participate in this and other biennials, and thereby to assert their cultural and political independence, is a reminder that the national model (and the biennial format) can be used to resist as well as to assert hegemony. The recent furore surrounding Taiwan's participation in the Gwangju Biennale is another example.
The biennial format has an unusually prominent place in South Korea’s cultural life. A new project by e-flux Criticism, entitled Korean Biennials Today, reflects on what the exhibition format means to the republic, and what its evolution might tell us about the changing nature of biennials internationally. A previously published essay traced that history from the pro-democracy uprising of 1980 to the present. In this latest excerpt, the editors of e-flux Criticism talked to Binna Choi, curator of the Korean Pavilion at Venice.
The Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale was, until the Qatar Pavilion opened this year, the most recent addition to the exclusive group of national exhibition spaces located permanently in the city’s Giardini. Squeezed between the Japanese and German pavilions, its opening in 1995 was symbolic of Korea’s entry into the international cultural community that the Venice Biennale claims to represent.
It is not news to anyone that this system—a network of predominantly democratic countries bound together by economic and cultural exchange—has recently come under pressure. And so, as the opening week was dominated by protests and boycotts, the decision of curator Binna Choi to use the Korean Pavilion to explore issues of nationhood, belonging, and resistance felt prescient.
Artists Goen Choi and Hyeree Ro responded to her initiative by transforming the pavilion into a labyrinth of spaces, disrupting its established boundaries (Choi’s copper pipes run through and across its exterior walls) while constructing provisional new enclosures (visitors are guided around the interior by Ro’s shimmering fabric screens). When I meet Choi, the exhibition is closed as part of a strike organized by the Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA) and Italian trade unions to protest Israel's participation in the exhibition amid the war in Gaza. We sit together on the pavilion’s flat roof; a police helicopter circles overhead.
Editors: You’re closed all day, in solidarity with the strike?
Binna Choi: Yes, I think it’s important to participate.
Eds: Or not to participate, I suppose. That tension between being inside and outside, participating and refusing to be complicit, seems to be at the heart of this exhibition.
BC: I have mixed feelings about the international art world. It’s both a sanctuary, in which connections can be made, and a gated community. A space in which freedom is possible, and also an expression of power. We can’t ignore this.
Eds: You could say the same about a nation-state, and this exhibition is also shaped by protest and resistance. I believe you came up with the proposal after the attempted coup of 2024?
BC: Yes. The then-president [Yoon Suk Yeol] announced the imposition of martial law on December 3, 2024. I developed this proposal in March of the following year, a few weeks before his impeachment, and concurrently with the events of that time. In fact, I felt the proposal would succeed only if impeachment proceeded!
The image of the “fortress” and the “nest” in relation to the nation-state comes from that moment. During the impeachment trial, Yoon made the presidential compound into a fortress. There was barbed wire, a blockade, hundreds of members of the security forces. Meanwhile, protests—especially on the pro-impeachment side—continued through a harsh winter.
People protected each other, created a sanctuary for each another. In January, it snowed a lot, and so they wore space blankets to keep warm. This became an icon of the protests, and they became known as the “kisses protestors” because they looked like the chocolate candy [Hershey’s “Kisses,” which come wrapped in silver foil]. In the Liberation Space Reader, we have included photographs by Yezoi Hwang, who joined the rallies every Saturday and documented them.
So I became interested in endurance. This resonates with Bearing, the intervention by Hyeree Ro in the pavilion. I wondered, what made those protestors stay through the cold? Why did the resistance succeed, and not fade away? Also, when is it important to fight, and when to seek reconciliation?
Eds: It’s interesting that a protest against martial law should be associated with kisses, with love.
BC: You know, the protests for impeachment were much more diverse, and fun, and beautiful [than those against the impeachment of the president]. People sang K-pop songs, some of which have become anthems of the resistance. The pro-government side sang Enka songs [a genre of traditional Japanese music, typically sentimental ballads], and their slogans were often loaded with hatred.
Eds: The phrase “Liberation Space” harks back to an earlier moment of national unity, and division.
BC: “Liberation Space” is a Korean expression that describes the period after liberation from Japan [in 1945] and before the division of the peninsula [in 1948]. An intense period, in which so many people participated in setting the future of the nation.
Eds: And you see parallels between that time and this?
BC: Yes, you saw with the demonstrations after the imposition of martial law, that this was a model that could be replicated. Being out on the street, engaged in the future of the nation, not as something big and abstract but in which the newly awakened sovereign subjects determine how they are going to live together. Even the pro-government protests seemed to be linked to the legacy of the “Liberation Space” [the period between 1945 and 1948]. They carried US flags, calling those who supported impeachment “communists.”
Things are changing under the new government: we have entered a time of “people’s sovereignty.” The new president is working to improve living conditions. We have to see how long that will last, how far he and his government can go, but at least we can see that someone in power is serving the people rather than dominating them.
Eds: The tension between creating an inclusive community and defending it is implied by the phrase “Fortress/Nest.”
BC: You can see those ideas reflected in the exhibition, which I would like to present as a monument to the idea of a “Liberation Space.” The Korean Pavilion itself could be characterized by this duality, and Goen Choi and Hyeree Ro have made those twin aspects sensible and, more importantly, complicated them.
I first approached Goen Choi by asking her to engage with the exterior of the pavilion and, in the most simplistic terms, to deal with the aspects of it as a “fortress.” She came up with the excellent response entitled Meridian, which deploys copper pipes that penetrate the pavilion, like acupuncture needles. Rather than a wall, closure, or partition, she proposes healing: the core mechanism of acupuncture is to unblock the “meridians” so that energy flows again.
Hyeree’s Bearing corresponds to that. She has constructed a pathway through the pavilion, an enveloping membrane built out of around 4,000 organza circles which also creates a womb or nest-like interior space. This soft, vulnerable structure keeps people in circulation around the eight “stations” that she has built in the pavilion, each of which is like a small temple or pagoda for what she considers “liberatory” practice.
Eds: Much of the conversation at this, and every, Venice is around the model of national representation and its continued viability. This pavilion—and recent Korean history—offers a reminder that democratic statehood and its freedoms must be fought for, continuously.
BC: From the Korean perspective—a postcolonial perspective—the discourse around the abolition of nation-states can be very frustrating. Finally we recovered our nation, after much suffering, and we rebuilt it. And then Europeans say, “abolish nations!” That’s a European privilege. “Why can’t we just abandon nations?” asks Rosi Braidotti. Because you don’t have the same pain! That pain unites people. Or rather, it connects people. That’s an important distinction. I would like to make clear I am not a nationalist. I just say we’d rather acknowledge forms of nationhood, and models of nation-states, that make for better collective governance.
Eds: That the impulse to abolish borders might come from powers whose empires have been broken up by the emergence of postcolonial nation-states isn’t often acknowledged in the art world.
BC: I learned a lot from working on the Hawai‘i Triennial. Hawai‘i is an occupied nation and so terms like “liberation,” “sovereignty,” “self-determination,” “love of land,” “love of nation,” are used a lot. Not only do these expressions carry very different meanings in the context of an occupation but also are articulated differently. Aloha ‘āina [a foundational Native Hawaiian value emphasizing a deep, reciprocal relationship between people and the environment] literally means “love of the land,” for instance.
There are different petitions to do with Hawaiian liberation and the self-determination movement, but among the younger generation there is a commitment to the idea that Hawai‘i never lost its sovereignty. And that’s because sovereignty consists in carrying each other and creating sanctuary with respect to the land that feeds them and for which they are responsible.
Eds: So there is a form of sovereignty that exceeds a purely legalistic framework. In which nationhood is not necessarily, or not only, a structure through which to exercise power but also to foster community. This is very interesting in the context of Venice, of course, and of biennials premised on national participation more generally.
BC: Again, we come back to this issue of how to engage with the duality of nationhood: How can it be inclusive, enduring, forgiving, embracing, nurturing—as Bearing suggests—without simply eradicating all borders and boundaries in one go? This is the question we are asking!
Eds: Do you believe that art can have a practical influence on the future of a nation?
BC: I think so, in the sense that every single subjectivity matters.
This interview is excerpted from Korean Biennials Today, a co-publication by e-flux and Korea Arts Management Service (KAMS).