What happens when one chapter of life has come to an end, but the next has yet to begin? Rites of Passage, the 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:
‘We are perched on this sharp edge of time – a transparent precipice that renews itself every moment – and we press on. Restlessly, we place one foot on the edge of the time we have lived through so far, and without hesitation we stretch the other out into the void, without even a fraction of a second to bring our will into play. It is not a matter of particular courage; we simply have no other choice. I am aware of this risk now, at this very moment. I am recklessly stepping into a time I have not yet lived through, into the space of a book I have not yet written’ (trans. Justyna Najbar-Miller).
The Nobel laureate worked on her book while on a writing residency in Warsaw. In it, the Polish capital is described in the book as a ‘white city’ with a complex wartime history, which rose from its own ruins. The city – a symbol of renewal and constant change.
‘This passage from ‘The White Book’ reminds us that change is a consistent part of our life’, emphasises Paulina Olszewska, curator of the exhibition at Gwangju, bringing the main motto of the biennial into focus: You Must Change Your Life. ‘We find ourselves in a constant process of transformation, whether in the biological sphere or in our private, social or spiritual lives. Moments of balance are exceptional states’, she continues.
In developing the concept for the exhibition, she focused on rites of passage, which mark moments of change, according to the theory put forward by the French anthropologist Arnold van Gennep. She was interested in both culturally and socially embedded rituals and those of a private nature, which people in secularised societies define for themselves, moving away from old traditions and structured frameworks.
The exhibition brings together artists from Poland and Korea: Alicja Bielawska, Urszula Broll, Inside Job (Ula Lucińska and Michał Knychaus), Park Saengkwang, Yeesookyung, and Anna Zaradny. One of the most important contemporary art events in Asia, the Biennale will run from 5 September to 15 November 2026.
Find out more: Between Warsaw and Gwangju: The Poland Pavilion at Gwangju Biennale 2026 explores transition, continuity, and community | Instytut Adama Mickiewicza
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