“Rites of Passage”, an exhibition organised by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute for the Poland Pavilion at Gwangju Biennale 2026, explores the experience of transition – both on a personal and a global scale. The project takes its point of departure from “The White Book” by Han Kang, the Nobel Prize-winning Korean author born in Gwangju, who lived in Warsaw while writing the book.

The exhibition is curated by Paulina Olszewska and brings together artists from Poland and Korea: Alicja Bielawska, Urszula Broll, Inside Job (Ula Lucińska and Michał Knychaus), Park Saengkwang, Yeesookyung, and Anna Zaradny. “Rites of Passage” is presented as part of the 16th Gwangju Biennale, held this year under the theme “You Must Change Your Life”.

The rites of passage is not merely the subject of the exhibition – it is also embedded in its spatial design. Visitors will move through a sequence of environments, ranging from spaces of subtle, almost imperceptible transformation to areas defined by distinct thresholds, tensions, and ruptures.

In one section, the artworks will gently merge into one another, suggesting change as a gradual process. In another, visitors will encounter contrast, dissonance, and a sense of disruption. The journey through the pavilion becomes a physical experience of crossing a threshold – of moving from one state of being to another.

The exhibition also responds to the theme of the 16th Gwangju Biennale, “You Must Change Your Life”. In a world marked by war, the climate crisis, social tensions, and increasing polarisation, transformation is no abstract concept. It is something we experience every day – in our private lives, in politics, in society, and in our relationships with others.

The exhibition brings together different generations, artistic traditions, and media. Traditional painting and drawing meet installation, video, sound, ceramics, textiles, and objects made from both organic and industrial materials.

Works by Alicja Bielawska, Inside Job, and Anna Zaradny are presented in dialogue with historical works by Urszula Broll and Park Saengkwang – widely regarded as one of the leading figures of modern Korean art, whose work has become an enduring part of Korea’s cultural heritage—as well as an installation by Yeesookyung. Together, they create an environment in which materials, images, sounds, and textures evoke an atmosphere of contemplation, suspension, and transformation.

“Rites of Passage” has been conceived as an open exhibition, without providing a single prescribed narrative or any straightforward answers. Each visitor is invited to experience it in their own way, interpreting its symbols, tensions, and transitions through the lens of their own sensibility.

It is a space for contemplation: intimate and personal, yet deeply attentive to the contemporary world. Viewed through both Polish and Korean perspectives, the exhibition becomes a shared meditation on change – inevitable, unsettling, yet profoundly human.