Lee Bae
La Maison de la Lune Brûlée
Hansol Foundation – Museum SAN
Wilmotte Foundation

“La Maison de la Lune Brûlée” (The House of the Burning Moon) is a showcase of the charcoal-derived works by South Korean artist Lee Bae, who explores the centuries-old “moonhouse burning” ritual. With themes of renewal, circularity, and nature, Lee’s dramatic works intertwine folklore and heritage. Curated by Valentina Buzzi, the show presents his video work of the daljip teugi ritual, Burning (2024); charcoal-on-canvas works of the Issu du Feu (2024) series; the nearly five-meter-tall black-granite sculpture, Meok (2024); and the empheral sculptural installation Moon (2024), which leads to the Venetian waters.

Seundja Rhee
Towards the Antipodes
Korean Research Institute of Contemporary Art
ArteNova

Curated by the former director of the Korea’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Bartomeu Mari, “Towards the Antipodes” showcases nearly 20 paintings by Seundja Rhee (1918–2009) from 1959 through 2008. The most prominent female artist of her generation, Rhee delved into abstraction alongside her contemporaries Kim Whanki and Yoo Youngkuk. She emigrated to France in 1951 and spent more than half of her life there, creating works that integrate the East Asian theory of yin and yang and the five elements that make up the universe (eumyangohaeng) with sensibilities from Western painting.

The Spirits of Maritime Crossing
Bangkok Art Biennale Foundation
Palazzo Smith Mangilli Valmarana

“The Spirits of Maritime Crossing” showcases a constellation of artworks from Southeast Asia, reflecting upon cultural flows and moving water as metaphors of unexplored oceans and territories. Featured artworks highlight themes of displacement, diaspora, colonialism, with an emphasis on the symbolism of water and maritime crossings. In a new film, performance artist Marina Abramović’s spirit encounters the Monkey King, played by dancer Pichet Klunchun, on journeys from Venice to Bangkok. Jompet Kuswidananto’s chandelier sculptures evoke broken dreams while Jakkai Siributr’s textile works narrate stories of asylum seekers.

Shahzia Sikander
Collective Behavior
Cincinnati Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art
Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel

“Collective Behavior” brings together a three-decade, career-spanning selection of more than 30 artworks by Shahzia Sikander, tracing her distinctive iconography and exploration of colonialism and women’s history in South Asia across mediums. Organized by Cincinnati Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art, the exhibition begins with her breakthrough work The Scroll (1989–90), created for her graduate thesis at Lahore’s National College of Arts, which established her as the vanguard of Pakistan’s contemporary neo-miniature movement. Sikander also debuts new site-specific drawings and glassworks that respond to the architecture and history of Venice’s global trade and artistic exchange.

Yoo Youngkuk
A Journey to the Infinite
Yoo Youngkuk Art Foundation
Fondazione Querini Stampalia

Curated by Kim Inhye, “A Journey to the Infinite” is a retrospective of the Korean abstract painter Yoo Youngkuk (1916–2002), known for his many vivid-hued paintings of the Taebaek Mountains in eastern Korea. Presented across three floors of the historic Fondazione Querini Stampalia, the exhibition is the first solo showcase in Europe of the late artist’s oeuvre, comprising 30 oil paintings and more than 20 drawings and prints. In the museum library, archival materials and photographs from the 1960s and ’70s provide insights into the life and practice of the influential postwar painter.

Yu Hong
Another One Bites the Dust
Asian Art Initiative of the Guggenheim Museum
Chiesetta della Misericordia

Presented in the abbey of a former monastery, the Chiesetta della Misericordia, in Venice’s Cannaregio district, “Another One Bites the Dust” is painter Yu Hong’s first major European exhibition and is curated by Alexandra Munroe, the senior curator at large of the Guggenheim Museum and Foundation. The title references the seminal British rock band Queen’s 1980 ballad and reflects the theme of Yu’s presentation of new site-specific figurative and narrative paintings. Borrowing motifs from religious art and imagery found on social media of people in real and simulated situations of danger, Yu depicts the inevitable cycles of human existence from birth to death.