Danish arts center director, curator picked as artistic directors of Korean Pavilion at 2024 Venice Biennale

Arts Council Korea has appointed both the director and curator of a Danish art center as the artistic directors of the Korean Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition in 2024, the first-ever joint artistic directorship since the establishment of the Korean Pavilion in 1995.

Jacob Fabricius, the artistic director of Art Hub Copenhagen, and curator Lee Seol-hui at Kunsthal Aarhus in Denmark will plan the Korean Pavilion around the theme, “Korean Scent Journey."

Arko said Fabricius and Lee will showcase the latest art works of Koo Jeong-a under the theme of “Odorama cities,” turning the entire Korean Pavilion building into an immersive and intimate environment with invisible elements such as scents and temperatures, drawing a national portrait of Korea.

“Artist Koo Jeong-a’s unique sensibility will be expressed through the exhibition and the Korean Pavilion will serve as a place for sensory experience and function as a community of memory,” said an Arko official.

Fabricius served as the artistic director of Kunsthal Aarhus from 2016 to 2021 before assuming the director position in 2021. In 2019, he served as the exhibition director of Busan Biennale.

Lee Seol-hui, who is also from Denmark, was previously the head of the exhibition team for the Busan Biennale in 2020.

Applications for the 2024 Korean Pavilion artistic directorship were accepted in December last year, six months earlier than usual. Both overseas and local experts in the art world, including curator Eungie Joo, who served as the commissioner of the Korean Pavilion in 2009, and Yung Ma, the artistic director of the 11th Seoul Media Art Biennale in 2021, participated as selection committee members.

The Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition, also dubbed as the Olympics of Arts, will take place from April 20 to Nov. 24, 2024 in Venice, Italy.