A major new exhibition tracing 80 years of artistic exchange between South Korea and Japan has opened at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, in Gwacheon, marking the 60th anniversary of normalised diplomatic relations between the two countries and bringing together around 200 works by 43 artists and artist teams.
“Road movie: Art between Korea and Japan since 1945” was jointly organised by the Korean museum and the Yokohama Museum of Art, where it first opened late last year and drew approximately 37,000 visitors before travelling to Gwacheon. The exhibition spans the period from Korea’s liberation in 1945 to the present day, charting how artists from both countries have influenced one another across decades of complex political and cultural history.
Among the central figures featured is Nam June Paik, who studied aesthetics and art history in Japan during the 1950s and went on to build close ties with the country’s avant-garde art scene. It was in Japan that he met Shigeko Kubota, his lifelong partner and artistic collaborator. The exhibition presents Paik’s project “Bye Bye Kipling,” which brought together Korean traditional dance, American popular music and Japanese avant-garde art on a single screen in real time — a direct challenge to Rudyard Kipling’s famous assertion that East and West could never meet. Alongside it sits Kubota’s video work “Broken Diary: Korean Trip,” which documents Paik’s return to South Korea after 34 years abroad.
The exhibition’s opening section, “In Between: Zainichi Koreans’ Gaze,” examines the experiences of Korean artists who remained in Japan after liberation. Cho Yanggyu’s “Sealed Warehouse” depicts a dark, enclosed labour site, reflecting both the realities faced by Zainichi Koreans and the wounds left by national division.
A central portion of the exhibition explores the growth of artistic exchange following the normalisation of diplomatic relations between South Korea and Japan in 1965, featuring works by Lee Ufan, Park Seo-bo, Yun Hyong-keun, Jiro Takamatsu and Kishio Suga that trace how modern art movements developed in dialogue across both countries. Later works by Masato Nakamura, Takashi Murakami and Lee Bul illustrate how this exchange expanded during the 1990s, moving beyond official institutions into personal networks and collaborative relationships. Lee Bul’s “Cyborg W5,” depicting a futuristic but incomplete body, questions boundaries between humans and machines and between male and female identities, reflecting shared concerns about technology and identity that shaped contemporary art in both countries after the 1990s.
The exhibition’s final section turns to present-day solidarity. Koki Tanaka’s “Vulnerable Histories: A Road Movie” connects the massacre of Koreans following the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake to more recent anti-Korean demonstrations in Japan, prompting reflection on histories of discrimination and exclusion. Jung Yeondoo’s “Magician’s Walk” considers landscapes following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, exploring the possibility of empathy and solidarity with the suffering of others.
The exhibition also extends into the museum’s outdoor sculpture park in Gwacheon, where six sculptures by Korean artists based in Japan and Japanese artists — including Duckjun Kwak, Quac Insik and Lee Ufan — underscore the museum’s role as a significant site of Korean-Japanese artistic exchange.
Kim Sung-hee, director of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, said the exhibition revisits “historical moments experienced by the two countries and the traces of artistic exchange formed within them,” adding that she hopes it will offer visitors the chance to rediscover “the status and possibilities of Korean and Japanese contemporary art.”
