South Korean songs are an unexpected sound on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi. But a partnership exhibition at Manarat Al Saadiyat by the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) and the Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation (ADMAF) rings out with the sounds of Min Oh’s video Etude for Etude (Music Performance) (2018). The work is part of a group show of 29 Korean contemporary artists titled Layered Medium: We Are in Open Circuits (until 30 June). The collaboration between the two organisations will continue with Intense Proximities, a show of Emirates-based artists opening at SeMA in December.
“There are a lot of stories to be told, and different histories to appreciate,” says the UK-based curator Maya El Khalil, who has organised both exhibitions with the SeMA curator Kyung-hwan Yeo. Emiratis are familiar with “the miracle of Korean film and popular art and music, and we know a few key artists”, El Khalil says. “But not the rich history of [Korea], with the politics [and] not the transformation [of the country].”
Installation view of Layered Medium: We Are in Open Circuits at Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, until 30 June Courtesy Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation
The title of the Saadiyat Island exhibition was inspired by Nam June Paik’s writings and the show opens with his 1998 video Self-Portrait Dharma Wheel. The new media art movements Paik inspired within Korea are well represented in SeMA’s collection of more than 6,000 works and have informed its biennial exhibition, Mediacity Seoul.
Also showing in the first gallery at Manarat Al Saadiyat is Lee Kun-Yong’s Logic of Place (1975), a table of texts and documents offering a crash course on South Korea’s artistic history, which paralleled its resistance movements leading up to 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, until 30 June Courtesy Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation
Yeo says the curatorial team opted against juxtaposing the two countries’ artists in a single two-site show largely due to considerations of time, as preparations only started last year. Instead, El Khalil says, they opted to organise a more comprehensive presentation of each country’s art to the other. The curators wanted each art scene “to be fully appreciated on its own terms”, she adds.
Midway through the show, Lee Bul’s Untitled (Crystal Figure) (2006) faces Moka Lee’s painting Surface Tension 06 (After Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency) (2024), which depicts a woman’s bruised face. It initially caused some discomfort with local officials, El Khalil says, but ultimately all the curators’ selections were included.
Haegue Yang's Sol LeWitt Upside Down – Maquette for 1 x 2 x 2 Half Off, Expanded 170 Times (2016) on view in Layered Medium: We Are in Open Circuits at Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, until 30 June Courtesy Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation
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Bul and Lee are featured alongside works by other prominent female Korean artists, such as Haegue Yang and Suki Seokyeong Kang. Around two-thirds of the exhibition’s 29 artists are women, which reflects the makeup of SeMA’s collection, Yeo says. One third of the works in the museum’s collection are by women artists, which is a much higher than the average for Korean institutions.
“[We] did pause to reconsider whether we were unintentionally privileging women artists,” Yeo says. “However, our primary focus remained firmly on the exhibition’s thematic concept and selecting the strongest artworks to best convey it, rather than on making decisions based explicitly on gender politics.”
- Layered Medium: We Are in Open Circuits, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, until 30 June
- Intense Proximities, Seoul Museum of Art, 16 December-22 February 2026