Emerging artists explore identities and bodies through queer perspectives at Frieze Seoul

Female queer art, long sidelined, is stepping into the spotlight at Frieze Seoul 2025.

A scene of the "off-site 2: Eleven Episodes" exhibit spotlighting works by Korean female and queer artists is on display at Kukje Gallery K2 in Jongno District, central Seoul [ART SONJE CENTER]

Female queer art, long sidelined, is stepping into the spotlight at Frieze Seoul 2025.

Frieze Live, the international art fair’s platform for live art and performance, partnered with local contemporary art institution Art Sonje Center to showcase the “off-site 2: Eleven Episodes” exhibition, which features artworks and performances by 11 emerging Korean artists who identify as female and/or genderqueer. It foregrounds non-normative expressions of the body and identity that resist the gender binary, and is on display through Oct. 26.

Frieze House, the fair’s new year-round exhibition space in Jung District, also places queer art in the spotlight with its inaugural show “UnHouse.” Running through Oct. 2, the exhibition reimagines domestic space through a queer lens, with works by 14 artists including Joeun Kim Aatchim, Haneyl Choi, Dew Kim, Anne Imhof, Rebecca Ness, Catherine Opie and Xiyadie.

Some may ask, then: What is “female queer art?” The answer is as diverse as the artists themselves.

Scene of "off-site 2: Eleven Episodes" exhibit spotlighting works by Korean female and queer artists is on display at Kukje Gallery K2 in Jongno District, central Seoul [ART SONJE CENTER]

They can be direct, as seen in photography by Hong Ji-young, which displays a series of self-portraits, portraits of a lover and scenes from protests and disasters that tie the artist’s personal life to the broader social context at Art Sonje's exhibit.

Visual artist duo Yagwang metaphorically explores queer identity through a staged video filmed in Seoul’s redevelopment zones. The work imagines ghosts who, even after death, remain homeless and settle in towns associated with death and disease. Despite being aware of these dangers, they accept them as part of their existence.

Yagwang, comprised of artists Kim Ter-ri and Jeon In, has previously held solo exhibitions, including “Kind” at PS Center in 2024 and "Lubricant" at Windmill in 2022, and participated in major group shows at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and ARKO Art Center.

Kwak So-jin, recipient of the 2024 Sisley Award for Young Creation in Korea, does not foreground her sexuality at all in her work.

Her main piece at Art Sonje is a whimsical and experimental video documenting a high-frequency current discharged from a vibrating transformer on her studio rooftop, creating artificial lightning as a hand reaches out to touch it.

“Queerness is fundamentally idealistic, even utopian. In that way, it closely aligns with art, which is also based on an idealistic belief — that something I feel can be transmitted to you,” Kwak told the Korea JoongAng Daily on Aug. 22. “That belief is fragile, but essential. I believe there is no art that is not queer.”

For artist Kim of Yagwang, queerness is both personal and expansive.

“We live in a society where anything that deviates from the so-called standard is still looked down upon. I think ‘queer’ should go beyond sexual identity to embrace everything outside the norm. At the same time, identity remains a crucial aspect. I try to work with that awareness in mind.”

The prominence of queer voices at Frieze Seoul reflects more than curatorial choice and marks a cultural moment. In the wake of Covid-19, Korea’s art scene has seen queer artists, especially female and genderqueer, move from the margins to the forefront, their perspectives resonating in a society still negotiating questions of identity and normativity.

“Queerness is a framework that completely rejects the conditions of the present and insists on imagining something beyond them,” said Kwak. “Escaping the normative — whether patriarchy, heteronormativity or capitalism — requires radical imagination. Queerness is one such imagination."

"That’s why queer voices in art matter today: they insist on envisioning conditions outside our current reality, even when that reality feels impossible to escape.”

The Korea JoongAng Daily spoke to female queer artists whose works are currently on display at Art Seonje's "off-site 2: Eleven Episodes" exhibit. Excerpts have been edited for clarity and length.

Kwak So-jin

Artist Kwak So-jin [PARK SANG-MOON]

Q. Could you introduce the main video work you're showing in this exhibition?

A. “Cloud to Ground” was created during my research for a solo show about lightning and thunder. I installed a Tesla coil on my studio roof to generate artificial lightning, and then created a short, shadow-play-like video about hands producing and guiding that lightning. Because of perspective, the hands appear huge, like those of a god generating lightning between mountains and clouds. Also, electricity already flows through our bodies, and in the video, my hand guides the discharge of the coil. The current flows through my body because it’s conductive, so you can literally see the path of electricity shaped by my finger movements.

So the work portrays how contact can occur even across great distances. Still, the video itself isn’t supposed to be heavy or didactic — it’s just a short, playful shadow play video where you might wonder: is this real lightning, or fake lightning? Is it near or far? That uncertainty is the experience.

You’ve been researching and working with lightning for two years now. What draws you to this subject matter?

Lightning might look like a random event coming down from the sky, but from a quantum mechanics perspective, it can only occur when there’s an equal response from the ground. It doesn’t just strike unilaterally; a pathway is made only when both the sky and the earth respond simultaneously. That instantaneous relationship is what makes lightning possible.

I’ve always been interested in states of identity or existence that aren’t fixed by a single subject, but are temporarily held in place through relationships and tensions between two or more forces. Lightning is exactly like that. Its occurrence depends on a complex web of coincidences. Lightning emerges only when networks of the ground and the sky respond to each other.

The documentary-like character of your work across your career is especially interesting. Could you describe your working method? I work by being swept along. For example, in another video project, I followed deer communities in their natural habitat. To film nocturnal animals, I had to adjust my life to their rhythm and stay awake at night, sleeping during the day. Filming outside was physically exhausting: hot, tiring, sleep-depriving. I couldn’t maintain a fixed position behind the camera, so I kept being swept along with the deer, running after them and losing them.

At some point, I realized that maintaining a detached, objective stance toward a subject is almost an illusion. Instead, being swept along by given conditions became the condition of my work. Where do you usually draw inspiration?

From my environment. I work in Pocheon, where I’m constantly exposed to the elements, like heat and the cold. It’s not about abstract ideas of “the planet,” it’s about my body physically suffering from climate conditions. Vulnerability sharpens exposure: the weaker or more marginalized you are, the more surface area you have in contact with the world.

For me, being a woman, an artist, a queer person — all these identities are choices to live in more contact with the outside world, instead of insulating myself. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s also what nourishes my work.

Kwak So-jin's works are on display at the "off-site 2: Eleven Episodes" exhibit [ART SONJE CENTER]

Yagwang

Artists Jeon In, right, and Kim Ter-ri who make up Yagwang collective [PARK SANG-MOON]

Q. What does the name Yagwang mean?

A. Yagwang, which literally means “luminous,” comes from phosphorescence: when something absorbs light during the day and then glows in the dark. That idea resonated with us because our work also aims to reveal things that are usually invisible — subcultures, marginalized voices and aspects that aren’t easily visible to most people. Like phosphorescence, we want to absorb and then illuminate those unseen aspects through our practice.

Can you describe your key works in this exhibit?

One of our central works is "Intruder," a video piece whose premise involves a character who continues to wander from house to house, even after death. In the clip, a real estate agent repeatedly shows absurd rooms, such as spaces with only one mirror or apartments that are already occupied. It reflects the struggle of always searching for a “home” even beyond death.

When we made it, we were also struggling with real issues: finding affordable housing and finding an exhibition space. We wove those difficulties into the work, connecting them with how many queer people experience their own bodies as contested or precarious “spaces.”

What do you hope audiences take away from your work?

We hope our works create queer spaces that audiences can move through and experience. For instance, at a recent exhibition, a middle-aged woman who was unfamiliar with concepts of sexual identity told us she connected with the work on a deeply human level. She laughed at a scene of ghosts working in a haunted house, such as cleaning, scaring people, doing repetitive labor, and said, “Yes, that’s what’s really scary and exhausting in life.”

Moments like that remind us that queerness doesn’t have to be something grand or abstract; it can be something simple and everyday. In fact, it can be about everything that falls outside of what is considered “normal.” We want audiences to approach our work with that broader mindset.

What are some challenges of working as queer women artists and producing art that is directly about your experiences in Korea?

Abroad, when artists say “I make queer art,” it’s treated as naturally as saying “I paint.” But in Korea, saying you make queer art still makes people see you as unusual.

At the same time, because we live here, there are things only we can express as queer artists in Korea. For example, our families don’t openly acknowledge our identities. They might know, but they pretend not to. That invisibility brings its own kind of strange freedom and humor, which often shows up in our work. In Korea, two women holding hands are assumed to be just close friends, whereas abroad, people might immediately recognize them as a couple. That cultural invisibility, or being unseen, is something we often transform into playful or humorous elements in our art.

Performers are acting in Yagwang's "Raw Proof" (2024) [YAKWANG]

BY LEE JIAN [lee.jian@joongang.co.kr]