Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul has opened "Inside Other Spaces: Environments by Women Artists 1956–1976," an exhibition that reconstructs immersive environments created by women artists from Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Originally organized with Munich’s Haus der Kunst, the Seoul presentation expands the project with additional works by Korean and Asian artists, including Jung Kangja’s "Muche-Jeon (Incorporeal Exhibition)." The show features reconstructed works by pioneers such as Lygia Clark, Marta Minujín, Nanda Vigo, and Tsuruko Yamazaki, whose 1956 piece "Red" is the earliest environment included. Visitors are invited to physically enter installations made of mirrors, translucent materials, sound, and light, experiencing art that dissolves boundaries between artwork, architecture, and viewer participation.
The exhibition matters because it restores visibility to women artists who pioneered immersive installation art decades before it entered the mainstream canon, challenging a Western-centered art history. By reconstructing poorly documented, temporary environments from archival materials, the show acts as an act of historical recovery. At a time when immersive exhibitions dominate museums and digital culture, "Inside Other Spaces" provides a deeper historical perspective on sensory participation in art, reframing the global conversation around experimental practices that have long been overlooked.