Iyahong: The Art of Metamorphosis

• Host: Jeju Special Self-Governing Province
• Organizer: Jeju Museum of Art
• Period: August 25 – November 15, 2026 (83 days)
• Venues: Jeju Museum of Art; Jeju Stone Culture Park; Jeju Art Platform; Art Space IAa; Remicon Gallery; and the Historic Old City Center (including Jejumok-Gwana, Gwandeokjeong Pavilion, etc.)
• Participating Artists: 70 artists/teams from 19 countries (Planned)

The Jeju Biennale, hosted by the Jeju Special Self-Governing Province and organized by the Jeju Museum of Art, is proud to announce its 5th edition this year. We would like to respectfully invite you to participate in the 5th Jeju Biennale and are pleased to provide the relevant details as follows.

Under the title “Iyahong: The Art of Metamorphosis”, the 5th Jeju Biennale explores the affective, metamorphic process where Jeju’s indigenous culture has encountered and merged with Northern civilizations. We examine this journey through three sub-themes: Stone, Human, and deities.

The Biennale’s core keyword, Iyahong, originates from the refrain of the Jeju folk song Iyahong Taryeong, capturing a cyclical flow of mixing and merging—entanglement and coalescence as a process of metamorphosis.

At the present civilisational turning point, the 5th Jeju Biennale proposes multiple post-human modes of being and an ecological horizon of the post-anthropological human, through the generative process in which Jeju’s geological conditions and an anthropocentric modernity have collided and coalesced.

The Biennale’s three sub-themes are Stone, Human, and Deities.

[Stone]

Jeju’s volcanic basalt shapes the island’s terrestrial attribute and everyday life. Northern megalithic traditions—seen in Jeju’s dolmens—interweave with this geology as part of Jeju’s cultural formation.

[Human]

Modernity may be read as a relentless pursuit of superhuman excellence in the Anthropocene. As a historical site of political exile (流配) from the Goryeo through the Joseon period, Jeju became a place where such entanglements were stripped back—yielding an aesthetics of Jol(拙), a becoming grounded in the milieu’s immanent forces.

[Deities]

Jeju’s polytheistic culture—often described as “18,000 deities”—holds the becoming of new cultural forms, where geological forces and human labours coalesce.

[Iyahong]

Fire/stone/earth, wind/sea/milieu, and people surge together into an affective, metamorphic Iyahong. From the Giant mother’s 'navel'(Omphalos), we hope to recover its immanent potential and its force of resilience.

Iyahong: The Art of Metamorphosis

As scattered elements gather, mingle, and merge into one, they metamorphose into an Iyahong-like refrain—life and matter reborn—resonating with the formation of Jeju aesthetics. The 5th Jeju Biennale unfolds across three thematic constellations: Stone, Human, and Deities.

[Stone]

Jeju is a land of stone, formed by volcanic activity around 1.7 million years ago. Basalt—rapidly cooled after eruptions, exposing its crystalline structure—formed the foundation of Jeju’s soils; over time, these geological conditions became embedded in daily life, shaping Jeju’s distinctive living culture. This interweaving is visible in the island’s emblematic stone walls and the Olle trails that connect them. It is also evident in the sinuous basalt stone-wall landscape known as “Heukryongmanri” (黑龍萬里; “Black Dragon Ten Thousand ri”). And, as seen in the island’s more than eighty dolmens shaped through contact with northern megalithic cultures, Jeju’s cultural formation includes a further convergence with megalithic tradition. Here, a new ecological principle for nature and humanity has taken root. This Biennale approaches Jeju as both a natural island and a civilisational island.

[Human]

Through Jeju’s history, we can reflect on a post-anthropological future that emerges from the present—arriving, taking root, and transforming. Modernity may be read as a relentless pursuit of superhuman excellence in the Anthropocene. Jeju—used as a site of political exile across the Goryeo and Joseon periods—became a place where such entanglements were stripped back, yielding an aesthetics of Jol (拙), a becoming grounded in the milieu’s immanent forces.

Key historical sources still referenced today include Sehando (歲寒圖) by Chusa Kim Jeong-hui (秋史 金正喜) — Sehando (歲寒圖) — as well as Yuhanlasangi (遊漢拏山記) by Choe Ik-hyeon (崔益鉉) —Jeju Pungtogi (濟州風土記) by Yi Geon (李健) — and Sok Eumcheongsa (續陰晴史). by Kim Yun-sik (金允植, 김윤식).

This Biennale, in particular, highlights Chusa’s perspective—shaped in Jeju, where he completed the Chusa style (秋史體) —by linking it to the aesthetics of jol (拙), principle found in Jeju letter paintings, folk paintings, and stone objects.

[Deities]

The process by which geological forces and human labors combine—becoming new aesthetic forms—also lives within Jeju’s polytheistic culture. Alongside well-known deities such as Baekjutto, Seolmundae Halmang, and Jacheongbi, Jeju has hosted 18,000 deities —nature spirits as changeable as the landscape, household deities, shape-shifting spirits, village gods, and deities from outside—coming and going, yet abiding.

Jeju, through its metamorphic force of Iyahong, can be understood as a post-anthropological ecological island where spirits and humans coexist, and where things and nature live in symbiosis.

The 5th Jeju Biennale seeks to unfold this “Iyahong aesthetics”—from Jeju to Korea and outward to the international sphere—together with artists working across local and global contexts.