The Leeum Museum of Art presents There Exists Another Evolution, But In This One, a solo exhibition by Anicka Yi—her most extensive museum presentation in Asia. Featuring recent projects alongside earlier works, the exhibition offers a rare glimpse into Yi’s evolving artistic universe, highlighting her engagement with non-human intelligence, materiality, and the dissolution of boundaries between species and systems.

The title, inspired by Zen Buddhist koans, signals a meditative shift in Yi’s work, engaging material, ecological, and cosmological themes. Her new video, Each Branch of Coral Holds Up the Light of the Moon, explores whether art can persist beyond the artist’s death. As the first installment of Emptiness, an ambitious project where an algorithm, trained on years of her studio’s output, acts as a “digital twin” of her practice, it challenges conventional notions of artistic presence.

Yi’s return to Korea holds deep personal and historical resonance. She reflects on the prehistoric migration of Asiatic peoples to the Americas alongside the planetary movements of algae and fungi, mirroring her own diasporic journey. The exhibition weaves biological and cultural histories, situating Korea within broader narratives of migration, adaptation, and interconnectedness. By linking evolutionary processes to identity, There Exists Another Evolution, But In This One transforms the museum into a speculative space where past, present, and future converge.

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