Jeju Island, South Korea — PODO Museum (Government Director: Chloe H. Kim) opens its new exhibition We, Such Fragile Beings on August 9, 2025, working by means of August 8, 2026. That includes 13 up to date artists from Korea and overseas, together with internationally acclaimed figures Mona Hatoum, Jenny Holzer, Liza Lou, and Sarah Sze, the exhibition explores the query: “Why will we, such fragile beings within the huge cosmos, persist in battle?” and seeks pathways towards 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, Tune Dong, Sho Shibuya, Robert Montgomery
Exhibition Overview
The exhibition attracts from the “Pale Blue Dot” {photograph} taken by Voyager 1 in 1990, which captured Earth from 6.4 billion kilometers away. This angle serves as a place to begin for analyzing human relationships and our shared existence on this planet.
The exhibition unfolds throughout three galleries and two specifically designed thematic areas.
Gallery 1: Temple of Oblivion
The exhibition the place works by Mona Hatoum, Jenny Holzer, Liza Lou, and Annabel Daou tackle themes of battle displacement, and collective reminiscence. These artists make use of supplies starting from concrete and steel to beadwork and textual content to discover how societies course of and repeat patterns of violence.
The gallery opens with works by celebrated artists equivalent to Mona Hatoum, who has exhibited on the Venice Biennale and documenta, and Jenny Holzer, who has spent the previous 5 many years dissecting the language of energy. Their works expose the uncooked face of latest society, mired in hatred and division.
Mona Hatoum presents a 1.6-ton concrete mass and rebar suspended in mid-air. The construction seems serene at first look however conveys an amazing sense of precarity. Born right into a Palestinian refugee household in Lebanon, Hatoum was unable to return residence following the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil Conflict in 1975. Her work evokes a haunting imaginative and prescient of near-collapse, grounded in private and political exile.
Jenny Holzer engraves 296 lead and copper plates with texts collected from politically polarized social media, treating them like archaeological artifacts. The work highlights how we’ve grown desensitized by the fast consumption of aggressive and hostile language.
Liza Lou collaborated with Zulu ladies in South Africa who had skilled racial oppression. Collectively, they lined the barbed wire that when confined them with hundreds of thousands of tiny beads.
Annabel Daou transcribes on a regular basis language gathered from conversations with residents onto six meters of microfiber utilizing correction fluid. Her work invokes the basic human threads that stay even in a fractured world.
Gallery 2: Portrait of Time
In Gallery 2, titled Portrait of Time, time is handled as a concrete, visible entity, as if portray a portrait. By means of this method, the exhibition provides a relative and sensory understanding of time.
4 artists discover the essence of time by means of distinct strategies and sensibilities. This consists of Sumi Kanazawa, Maarten Baas, Sarah Sze, and Lee Wan. Every reveals refined traits and expressions distinctive to time, providing new methods of perceiving it. By means of their works, guests encounter the relativity of time and the shared human situation of powerlessness in its presence.
Sumi Kanazawa accumulates the repetition of time as materials kind by connecting a whole lot of newspaper sheets lined in pencil marks to create a curtain-like set up.
Dutch designer and artist Maarten Baas presents a brand new work created for this exhibition. Depicting laborers endlessly assembling clock palms, the piece reveals how fashionable people are confined inside time’s smallest items.
Sarah Sze’s work means that whereas we every lead totally different lives, the landscapes of the unconscious that unfold in goals are surprisingly common.
Lee Wan visualizes the subjective expertise of time’s passage by means of 560 ticking clocks, every transferring at a distinct velocity. The work represents the various methods time is perceived.
PODO Museum’s Thematic House
PODO Museum incorporates specifically designed thematic areas into every exhibition to strengthen its core themes. These areas are conceptualized and produced in-house to reinforce the customer expertise.
The primary thematic house, Glass Cosmos, is a kinetic set up the place a whole lot of glass bulbs mild up in sequence when guests breathe into glass objects created by survivors of assorted types of violence. This participatory work invitations guests to expertise the connection between particular person ache and collective therapeutic.
We’re product of star stuff is an immersive set up. Inside an area surrounded by LED shows and mirrors, the Golden Report from Voyager’s 1977 mission performs greetings from humanity in 55 languages. As guests hear, they see themselves infinitely mirrored and step by step diminished within the mirrors, encountering their existence as tiny beings within the universe.
These thematic areas had been conceived by Government Director Chloe H. Kim and realized by means of collaboration with specialists throughout disciplines, together with panorama architect Sumu, glass artist Yang Yoowan, programmers Shin Jaeyoung, Ahn Roksu, and Park Jiyeon, and the artistic collective NAU.
Gallery 3: Mirror of Reminiscence
Gallery 3, the museum’s ultimate exhibition house, is titled Mirror of Reminiscence. It’s organized as an area the place recollections of previous and current, private and collective, replicate and reply to 1 one other like mirrors. As guests gaze into these mirrored recollections, they encounter a way of connection on the level the place their very own recollections meet these of others.
This gallery was developed as a part of PODO Museum’s ACA in PODO mission, which introduces up to date Asian artists. 4 artists from Korea, China, and Japan — Boo Jihyun, Kim Han Younger, Tune Dong, and Sho Shibuya — ask the query: “How lets stay, regardless of every thing?”
Boo Jihyun evokes a silent sea utilizing discarded fishing lamps. Kim Han Younger builds the burden of time by means of repeated brushstrokes. Tune Dong presents weathered doorways salvaged from demolition websites in Beijing, expressing quiet interdependence. Sho Shibuya overlays skies onto pages of every day information, gently protecting the day’s headlines.
By means of these quiet acts of repetition, the artists reveal the restorative energy of the on a regular basis. Collectively, they ship a transparent message: even in a damaged world, magnificence nonetheless exists, hidden inside our modest gaze.
“Love Is the Reply”
The ultimate work of the exhibition is an LED sculpture by Robert Montgomery from PODO Museum’s assortment, put in within the out of doors backyard. Beforehand displayed on the Tuileries Backyard of the Louvre in 2022, the piece brings the complete journey of the exhibition into focus with a single sentence: “Love is the revolutionary power that destroys darkness and breaks down the distances between us.”
After traversing the Temple of Oblivion, Portrait of Time, and Mirror of Reminiscence, guests in the end arrive on the most historical and sure reply: love.
“Sometimes considering the dimensions of the universe expands our body of reference and offers us the ability to transcend our every day considerations and issues,” stated Chloe H. Kim, Government Director of PODO Museum. “Whereas this exhibition begins with considerably heavy and provocative themes, we hope guests will uncover magnificence and hopeful messages by means of the artists’ eyes and expertise the transformative journey from violence to therapeutic.”
A New Cultural House Harmonized with Nature
PODO Museum has renovated its surrounding atmosphere to reinforce the customer expertise. The addition of grass lawns and out of doors efficiency areas within the entrance and rear gardens has created a tranquil strolling path that connects to PODO Resort. The out of doors backyard options sculptures by Robert Montgomery, Ugo Rondinone, and Kim Hongseok. A swing set up by the Danish artist collective SUPERFLEX can be scheduled to be added to the pine forest.
Since opening in 2021, PODO Museum has gained huge public help by presenting weighty social themes equivalent to hatred, minorities, and getting older in accessible and empathetic methods. Acknowledged as a must-visit museum in Jeju, it has been credited with reworking the cultural panorama of the mid-mountain area of Hallasan.
The exhibition runs from August 9, 2025 by means of August 8, 2026.
