South Korean songs are an surprising sound on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi. However a partnership exhibition at Manarat Al Saadiyat by the Seoul Museum of Artwork (SeMA) and the Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Basis (ADMAF) rings out with the sounds of Min Oh’s video Etude for Etude (Music Efficiency) (2018). The work is a part of a bunch present of 29 Korean modern artists titled Layered Medium: We Are in Open Circuits (till 30 June). The collaboration between the 2 organisations will proceed with Intense Proximities, a present of Emirates-based artists opening at SeMA in December.
“There are a whole lot of tales to be advised, and totally different histories to understand,” says the UK-based curator Maya El Khalil, who has organised each exhibitions with the SeMA curator Kyung-hwan Yeo. Emiratis are conversant in “the miracle of Korean movie and in style artwork and music, and we all know a number of key artists”, El Khalil says. “However not the wealthy historical past of [Korea], with the politics [and] not the transformation [of the country].”
Set up view of Layered Medium: We Are in Open Circuits at Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, till 30 June Courtesy Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Basis
The title of the Saadiyat Island exhibition was impressed by Nam June Paik’s writings and the present opens along with his 1998 video Self-Portrait Dharma Wheel. The brand new media artwork actions Paik impressed inside Korea are properly represented in SeMA’s assortment of greater than 6,000 works and have knowledgeable its biennial exhibition, Mediacity Seoul.
Additionally displaying within the first gallery at Manarat Al Saadiyat is Lee Kun-Yong’s Logic of Place (1975), a desk of texts and paperwork providing a crash course on South Korea’s creative historical past, which paralleled its resistance actions main as much as democratisation in 1987.
Nam June Paik’s Self-Portrait Dharma Wheel (1998) on view in Layered Medium: We Are in Open Circuits at Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, till 30 June Courtesy Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Basis
Yeo says the curatorial group opted in opposition to juxtaposing the 2 international locations’ artists in a single two-site present largely as a consequence of concerns of time, as preparations solely began final 12 months. As a substitute, El Khalil says, they opted to organise a extra complete presentation of every nation’s artwork to the opposite. The curators needed every artwork scene “to be totally appreciated by itself phrases”, she provides.
Halfway via the present, Lee Bul’s Untitled (Crystal Determine) (2006) faces Moka Lee’s portray Floor Rigidity 06 (After Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency) (2024), which depicts a girl’s bruised face. It initially precipitated some discomfort with native officers, El Khalil says, however finally all of the curators’ choices have been included.
Haegue Yang’s Sol LeWitt Upside Down – Maquette for 1 x 2 x 2 Half Off, Expanded 170 Occasions (2016) on view in Layered Medium: We Are in Open Circuits at Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, till 30 June Courtesy Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Basis
Bul and Lee are featured alongside works by different outstanding feminine Korean artists, resembling Haegue Yang and Suki Seokyeong Kang. Round two-thirds of the exhibition’s 29 artists are ladies, which displays the make-up of SeMA’s assortment, Yeo says. One third of the works within the museum’s assortment are by ladies artists, which is a a lot increased than the typical for Korean establishments.
“[We] did pause to rethink whether or not we have been unintentionally privileging ladies artists,” Yeo says. “Nevertheless, our main focus remained firmly on the exhibition’s thematic idea and deciding on the strongest artworks to greatest convey it, fairly than on making selections based mostly explicitly on gender politics.”
Layered Medium: We Are in Open Circuits, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, till 30 JuneIntense Proximities, Seoul Museum of Artwork, 16 December-22 February 2026
