Guest Country 2025
REPUBLIC OF KOREA
This exhibition is part of the “Korea–Italy Cultural Exchange Year 2024–2025,” established to celebrate the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the Republic of Korea and Italy. In this context, the Republic of Korea has been invited by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the Guest Country of Honour at Roma Arte in Nuvola, the most important modern and contemporary art fair in the capital.
Since its first edition in 2021, the fair has been held annually with great success, establishing itself as a key platform on the international art scene. In this edition, Korea will present not only contemporary art already widely recognized worldwide but also the innovative practices and emerging talent of young Korean artists, thus promoting cultural and artistic exchange between the two countries and further strengthening mutual understanding and trust.
Through this exhibition, the multiple creative worlds and dynamic artistic expressions of young Korean artists will be widely presented to the international public, offering them an opportunity to showcase their originality and potential on the global stage.
Fever State is an exhibition that reveals the intensity, tension, and explosive energy of emerging Korean contemporary art. Presented by the Korean Cultural Center in Italy, in collaboration with the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange (KOFICE), this exhibition takes place as the Special Exhibition of the Republic of Korea, Guest Country of Honour, at Arte in Nuvola in Rome. It clearly demonstrates the representative character and originality of Korean contemporary art on the international scene.
Here, “fever” is not merely an illness but a collective condition — a phenomenon that captures the shared sensibility of a generation. Fever State explores how young Korean artists intertwine traditional memory and cultural sensitivity with the language of the digital era, generating new visual landscapes. Between the intersections of tradition and modernity, material and immaterial, individual experience and collective aspiration, the exhibition questions how a generation expands its identity and resonates in the world. In this sense, Fever State is not simply a generational exhibition but a platform that embodies the creative tension and dynamic vitality of contemporary Korean society.
The six invited artists — Yun Choi, Jongwan Jang, Minhoon Kim, Yuja Kim, Yanghee Lee, and Kai Oh — explore the intersections between tradition and contemporaneity, between material and digital, between personal memory and collective imagination. From Minhoon Kim’s rope sculptures rooted in artisanal knowledge to Yuja Kim’s photographs of memory and mourning; from Kai Oh’s layered textile collages to Yanghee Lee’s choreographic video experiments; from Jongwan Jang’s surreal paintings on animal hide to Yun Choi’s satirical interpretations of consumer culture — their practices reflect the dynamism and complexity of Korea’s young generation.
Despite their diversity of artistic languages, the six artists collectively move through tradition and modernity, materiality and digitality, personal narrative and shared experience. Their works demonstrate that Korean contemporary art does not dissolve into global trends but reinterprets cultural memory and local sensibilities into an autonomous and compelling artistic language. Fever State presents young Korean art as a phenomenon in its own right.
Today, Korean art stands at the forefront of the international stage. A new generation of artists is attracting global attention for their ability to blend local specificity with universal resonance, tradition with digital culture. With Fever State, the six artists bring their voices to Rome, tracing a new layer of cultural and historical coordinates within the city. This exhibition thus becomes a stage for sharing with the world the collective fervor and creative strength of Korea.
Artistic Director and Curator
Chunghyung Lee, Artistic Director
Chunghyung Lee is a director working in the fields of visual arts and exhibition design. He is currently co-director of OurLabour and This is not a Church, as well as a member of the organizing committee for the National Pavilion of Women’s History. In recent years, Lee has led numerous projects that expand the boundaries between contemporary art and exhibition practices, collaborating with institutions and brands such as the Leeum Museum of Art, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Barakat Contemporary, and Genesis. He has played a significant role in major exhibitions and biennials both in Korea and internationally, with a particular focus on spatial and temporal scenography and on integrating narrative into exhibition design.
Sungah Serena Choo, Curator
Sungah Serena Choo currently works as an independent curator. She was previously a curator at the Leeum Museum of Art, assistant curator at the Asia Culture Center in Gwangju, and curatorial assistant at the Seoul Museum of Art. She has curated exhibitions, commissioned site-specific projects, and provided consulting for discursive and research programs, collaborating with various institutional and independent platforms. Her curatorial approach focuses on perspectives of materiality and on exploring sculptural attitudes in a discursive context. Attentive to changes in the conditions of artistic production, she has actively collaborated with artists, dedicating herself to discovering new voices and supporting the paths of mid-career artists. Often, her curatorial work lies at the intersection of artistic experimentation and critical reflection.
