Yagwang is a Seoul-based visual art collective formed in 2021 by Terri Kim and In Jeon. Its Korean name refers to phosphorescence, matter that absorbs light and becomes visible in darkness. It is an apt image for a practice that brings queer experience, marginalised bodies and forms of labour usually kept outside the frame into view.
Working across sculpture, video, installation, performance and painting, Yagwang unsettles fixed ideas of gender and identity by treating the body and space as unstable, contested structures. Latex, chains, artificial skin, cinematic sets and fractured timelines recur throughout its work, connecting sexuality and subculture to precarity, care and the labour concealed behind polished images.
Following the solo exhibitions Lubricant at Windmill in 2022 and KIND at PS Center in 2024, Yagwang appeared in exhibitions and programmes at MMCA, Art Sonje Center, Kukje Gallery, ARKO Art Center and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. In 2026, the collective received the Frieze Seoul Artist Award for Facade Zone, a site-specific installation that dismantles a fair booth and exposes the temporary architecture, materials and labour behind the commercial display of art.
Yagwang does not simply demand queer visibility. Its work asks who controls that visibility, what must remain hidden to produce it, and whether entering the institution changes the body on display or merely replaces the frame around it. Visit the official Yagwang website.
Yagwang, Raw Proof, 2024. Courtesy the artists Yagwang dismantles a Frieze Seoul booth for Facade Zone, a commission backed by Bvlgari. The work exposes hidden labour, unstable bodies and the fair’s talent for turning criticism into cultural capital.
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