The Venice Biennale, considered the world’s largest contemporary art festival, is renowned for its prestige within the global art scene and its rigorous artist selection process. For the 57th edition, which opened this year, 120 artists from 51 countries were invited to participate in the main exhibition. Among them, two Korean artists proudly made the list.

Yeesookyung (age 54), known for her Translated Vase series that reassembles broken ceramic fragments into new sculptural forms, and Sung Hwan Kim (age 42), a multidisciplinary artist based in the U.S. working across video, sound, light, sculpture, and drawing, were the featured Korean artists.

Among the nine sections of the Venice Biennale’s main exhibition, Yeesookyung was invited under the "Tradition" category. On May 11, she presented her monumental work titled Translated Vase: Nine Dragons in Wonderland, installed at the Arsenale, a historic Venetian shipyard converted into an exhibition space.


Yeesookyung, invited to the Venice Biennale main exhibition, presents her work Translated Vase: Nine Dragons in Wonderland on May 11 at the Arsenale in Venice. ©Yonhap News

Measuring 5 meters in length and weighing 1.5 tons, her work occupied a commanding central position within the Arsenale exhibition hall.

The artist explained, “I probably used around 400 to 500 broken ceramics to create this work. The title is inspired by a Chinese legend about the nine offspring of a dragon who perform magical feats in the human world.”

Yeesookyung reinterprets ceramic fragments discarded by master artisans as worthless, assembling them puzzle-like into new ceramic forms. The cracks are gilded using the same technique applied to Buddhist statues, resulting in endlessly expanding sculptural pieces.

Canadian curator Tyler Russell, after viewing the work, remarked, “Just as Korea, throughout its history, has endured invasions and fragmentation but continued its lineage, these broken ceramic pieces unite to be reborn as something new and even more beautiful. It’s impressive.”

The artist added, “Interpretation is entirely up to the viewer. But given the strong perception of ceramics as a traditional East Asian medium, most questions from visitors inevitably circle back to tradition.”


Kim Sung Hwan’s Love before Bond, presented at the Venice Biennale main exhibition. ©Yonhap News

She continued, “One phrase I personally dislike is ‘reinterpretation of tradition.’ Who am I to dare reinterpret tradition? Still, even as a contemporary artist, tradition has inevitably become an inescapable topic.”

This perspective led Yeesookyung, a graduate of Seoul National University’s Department of Western Painting, to study and be captivated by traditional Korean art forms such as Salpuri Gyobang Dance and Jeongga (classical Korean vocal music).

The artist acknowledged that being labeled “old-fashioned” for pursuing tradition is common but stated, “I’m not bothered by that. Yet, being invited to the Biennale’s ‘Tradition’ section certainly feels like a heavy responsibility.”

On the same day, Yeesookyung also captivated audiences in central Venice with a performance titled Following the Orbit of the Sun, which she directed herself.

She explained, “Through this performance, where Korean traditional music and dance meet bodybuilding and contemporary music, I aimed to reveal the strange beauty that tradition holds—continuing to explore tradition without being confined by it.”


Artist Sung Hwan Kim explains his work at the Giardini exhibition venue in Venice on May 11, after being invited to the Venice Biennale main exhibition. ©Yonhap News

Invited under the "Joys and Fears" section, Sung Hwan Kim presented his work Love before Bond at the Giardini exhibition hall.

The piece features his teenage niece and a Sudanese boy living in the U.S., both 15 years old, grappling with identity crises and latent anger stemming from adolescence and racial issues within American society. The video work was created in a workshop format in New York, combined with unique sound elements and structural components.

The piece reflects Kim’s ongoing interest in figures such as Philip Johnson, regarded as the “father” of American architecture, and James Baldwin, a literary giant who explored African American identity in the 1950s.

The artist, who has an unusual background in both architecture and mathematics, commented, “Before irrational numbers were discovered, people believed rational numbers were everything. Similarly, within society, there are those who physically and historically exist but are treated as invisible.”

He concluded, “My work expresses this personal interest in the visible versus the invisible.”

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