The Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul is hosting 'Inside Other Spaces: Environments by Women Artists, 1956-1976,' an exhibition that reconstructs immersive room-scale works by 11 women artists from underrepresented regions. Co-curated by Andrea Lissoni and Marina Pugliese, the show traces two decades of experimental environments made from light, sound, plastic, and foam, which anticipated installation and media art. The Seoul edition features a new version of Jung Kang-ja's 1967 work 'Muche-jeon (Incorporal Exhibition),' a smoke-filled chamber that evokes the tension of 1970s authoritarian Korea.
The exhibition matters because it challenges the male-dominated art historical canon by recovering fragile, often destroyed works that were excluded from galleries and collections due to lack of marketability. By reconstructing these environments through forensic archival research, the curators restore visibility to pioneering women who shaped contemporary installation art but were relegated to footnotes. The show also highlights how institutional and market biases erased women's contributions, making it a vital corrective to mainstream art history.