Somewhere over the Yellow Sea – Jeonnam International Sumuk Biennale
Group show with Tatiana Wolska
Jeonnam International Sumuk Biennale is the only biennale in the world dedicated to exploring East Asian identity through the contemporary language of Sumuk (ink painting). Launched in 2018, the biennale takes place in the southwestern province of Jeollanam-do, Korea, and reimagines Sumuk, rooted in the aesthetics of East Asian brush and ink traditions, not as a static cultural heritage, but as a living, evolving medium for global artistic dialogue.
Rather than simply preserving tradition, the biennale invites artists from across the world to engage with Sumuk as a conceptual and material practice that resonates with questions of memory, place, temporality, and transformation. By bridging past and present, local and global, it aims to shape a new aesthetic discourse grounded in the cultural sensibilities of East Asia while speaking to the urgencies of the contemporary world.
The 2025 edition—Neighbors in Civilization: Somewhere over the Yellow Sea—turns its gaze to the maritime cultural networks of East Asia, particularly those shaped by the Yellow Sea. Traversing tradition and experimentation, philosophy and materiality, the Biennale weaves past and present into a multilayered exhibition unfolding across Korea’s southern coastal region.
“It was with great joy that I accepted the invitation to participate in the Jeonnam International Sumuk Biennale 2025, curated by Yurim Hur and Yun Cheagab, whose theme this year is Somewhere Over the Yellow Sea. All the invited artists were asked to explore ink as a medium and, through it, to create a dialogue between their imaginations.
My initial intention was to create a monumental fresco directly on the two walls that had been assigned to me. I had brought my airbrush with me and planned to buy ink once I arrived in Seoul. But on the eve of my departure, I learned that the technical conditions had changed: it would no longer be possible to paint on the wall. Instead, I would be offered a huge roll of traditional Korean Hanji paper.
There were no scrolls capable of covering a surface area of 10 meters by 4 meters in one piece: I would have to work in fragments and then assemble them on site. It was an intimidating prospect, but one that opened up a space for reflection.
A few months earlier, at the Drawing Lab in Paris, I had experimented with another way of approaching failure and recomposition: using a simple office stapler, I had assembled fragments of torn watercolors. The exhibition had been transformed into an immersive installation, a colorful landscape of wounds and repairs. I then decided to adopt a similar approach in Gwangju: to recompose a monumental work from fragments of Hanji and Korean ink.
The Hanji underwent a metamorphosis. Sometimes animal skin, sometimes worked leather, sometimes embroidery, tapestry, haute couture, or landscapes seen from the sky. The paper curled, wrinkled, and shrunk. It became heavier and heavier, and the shapes became more autonomous. It was as if the paper and ink were playing together. As if they were becoming familiar with each other.”
– Tatiana Wolska
Opening Friday 29.08
Until 31.10
Location
Mokpo, Jindo, Haenam
Jeollanam-do (KR)
More info about Tatiana Wolska.