In the Korean Pavilion, Nation-Building Is an Open and Ongoing Process |
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In the Korean Pavilion, Nation-Building Is an Open and Ongoing Process
Goen Choi and Hyeree Ro's "Liberation Space" at the Venice Biennale is a meditation on nationhood, collective memory and liberation.
The Korean Pavilion at the 2026 edition of the Venice Biennale unfolds as a meaningful exercise in both physical and metaphorical deconstruction and reconstruction, using architecture to mirror the openness of the nation-building process. Titled “Liberation Space,” the pavilion is an exercise in collective thinking, as Seoul-based Goen Choi and New York-based Hyeree Ro bring their divergent sculptural practices into a shared choreography that transforms the pavilion into a “living, breathing monument,” as curator Binna Choi describes it. The pavilion is dynamic, a contemporary monument to national identity and nation-building as shared, continuous efforts shaped through negotiation and compromise and as a necessarily “unfinished project,” since liberation is always still being realized and exercised.
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Referencing the fraught three-year period between Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945 and the country’s division in 1948, the exhibition approaches nationhood not as a fixed historical achievement but as a continuous and unfinished process of negotiation, rupture, compromise and renewal. It is a process South Korea is still undergoing, and the pavilion’s question of “nation” arrives at a particularly timely moment, following the events of winter 2024-2025, when a sudden declaration of martial law by an incumbent president was swiftly countered by citizens and lawmakers alike, as well as by soldiers resisting mobilization orders. Add to this the ongoing tensions with North Korea, the country’s colonial past—still not fully reckoned with—and its present relationship with neighboring Japan, as the two countries are drawn into a strategic rapprochement amid a precarious geopolitical situation and China’s expanding regional influence.
"Liberation Space: Fortress/Nest" Artists: Goen Choi and Hyeree Ro Venue: La Biennale di Venezia Giardini Through: Nov. 22, 2026
It was the first time the two countries, whose shared history carries both light and shadow, collaborated to organize and promote both pavilions, embracing on an organizational level an understanding of liberatory movement as an ongoing practice. Yet despite presenting their projects together at a conference in Hong Kong during opening week, very little of this alliance was visible on the ground in Venice beyond the co-hosting of their opening reception, both inside the Giardini and at an........