▲ Binna Choi, artistic director for Korea at the 2026 Venice Biennale, speaks during a press conference at the Arts Council Korea on March 19, 2026. (Yonhap)
▲ Artistic Director Binna Choi (L), Choi Go-en (C) and Ro Hye-ree attend a press conference at the Arts Council Korea on March 19, 2026. (Yonhap)
▲ This photo, provided by the Arts Council Korea, shows Han Kang's "The Funeral." (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)

Venice Biennale-press conference

Korean Pavilion at Venice Biennale seeks comfort through art, with Han Kang's sculpture of blackened trees

By Woo Jae-yeon

SEOUL, March 19 (Yonhap) -- The theme of art bringing comfort to humanity has never been felt more timely amid the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.

And it is a theme the Korean Pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale will take to heart through "Liberation Space: Fortress/Nest," helmed by Artistic Director Binna Choi.

At a press conference at the Arts Council Korea on Thursday, Choi said the theme will resonate all the more deeply for Koreans who lived through a failed martial law declaration less than two years ago and continue to feel its lingering effects.

"As author Han Kang asked in her Nobel Prize lecture, 'Can the past help the present? Can the dead save the living?' I had to ask myself what role contemporary art could play in this world," she said. "I contemplated what we, as artists, could do to honor those who took to the streets in the name of democracy."

She explained the theme of fortress and nest was inspired both by the current social climate and by a turbulent period in Korean history between 1945 and 1948, when the country was grappling with upheaval in the wake of liberation from Japanese colonial rule.

To materialize the artistic theme, she has worked together with two artists -- Choi Go-en and Ro Hye-ree -- to transform the Korean Pavilion into a "liberation space" through their respective site-specific installations, "Meridian" and "Bearing."

Working with repurposed industrial materials, such as copper water pipes, Choi explores the boundaries between interior and exterior spaces, installing them across and through the pavilion, as if unblocking its pressure points to restore the flow of energy within.

Ro, meanwhile, draws on world events and personal narratives through sculpture, performance and video, inviting viewers to look past symbolic and social constructs to find universal meaning in shared human experience. She will install eight "stations" draped in sheer fabric inside the pavilion so that visitors can pause, mourn and remember, she said.

In the "mourn" station, Nobel Prize-winning novelist Han Kang will bring "The Funeral," her sculpture of blackened trees standing on a snowed-covered land. The image was drawn from Han's own dream that inspired her 2024 novel "We Do Not Part," which centers on the tragic massacre of civilians on the southern island of Jeju in 1948.

The 61st Venice Biennale is set to run from May 9 to Nov. 22.

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