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Leeum's installation art exhibition explores women-led history of genre

Published: 29 Apr. 2026, 20:23 Updated: 05 May. 2026, 14:14

LIM JEONG-WON
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Korean artist Jung Kang-ja's ″Incorporeal Exhibition,″ seen as part of the ″Inside Other Spaces″ exhibition to open at the Leeum Museum of Art in Yongsan District, central Seoul [LEEUM MUSEUM OF ART]

Before installation art had a name, when people still referred to it as “environment,” it was women who primarily worked with the genre and built it from the ground up — a history that contextualizes and inspires the upcoming exhibition “Inside Other Spaces,” which gathers 11 artists across Asia, Europe and the Americas and opens at the Leeum Museum of Art on May 5.

The exhibition first appeared at Munich's Haus der Kunst art museum in 2023 before traveling to Rome's Maxxi and Hong Kong's M+. Each of the exhibition's venues was provided with the opportunity to expand its scope, and the invitation, of course, extends to the Leeum. The Korean art museum has chosen to delve deeper into the exhibition's first time frame — 1956 to 1976 — by asking which Asian women created installation art during these two decades.

One answer to this question is Jung Kang-ja, whose 1970 work “Incorporeal Exhibition” is being reconstructed for the first time after being forcibly dismantled by the Korean government, which considered the avant-garde piece a form of political agitation.

“This exhibition does not stop at simply reilluminating women artists,” Kim Sung-won, the deputy director of Leeum and one of the show's co-curators, said during a press tour at the museum in Yongsan District, central Seoul, on Wednesday. “It proves that an important current of contemporary art cannot be explained without [Asian women's] works.”

“Feminism naturally comes into focus when it comes to this exhibition,” Kim said, though she added that the exhibition “prioritizes formally crediting these artists with their inventions.”

A view of the exhibition hall of the ″Inside Other Spaces″ exhibition, to open at the Leeum Museum of Art in Yongsan District, central Seoul on May 5 [LEEUM MUSEUM OF ART]

The founders of installation art were largely written out for two reasons. First, their works were ephemeral by design, as they were typically dismantled after each showcase. Second, once installation art began to solidify as its own genre, records began to shift its history to center on men. The result, Kim argues, was a “double erasure.”

In total, the exhibition reconstructs 11 environments at full scale — one per artist — recovered through more than four years of cross-institutional research involving conservators, art historians, estates and surviving collaborators. In installation art, an environment refers to the enclosed, walkable space that artists built from light, sound, color and material, which today's audiences would likely encounter under the looser banner of “immersive” or “experiential” art.

Alongside Jung's work, the exhibition will host the Asia premiere of “Dream House” (1962) by artists Marian Zazeela and La Monte Young. The continuous sound-and-light environment has been reconstructed in collaboration with Korean artist Choi Jung-hee.

“Incorporeal Exhibition” and “Dream House” sit at opposite ends of what Kim calls the exhibition's twin clocks: the time of restoration and the time of duration.

“Inside Other Spaces” runs through Nov. 29, with tickets for adults priced at 18,000 won ($12).

BY LIM JEONG-WON [[email protected]]