The beauty of rotting: MMCA's 'decay art' exhibit finds timeless wisdom in decomposition
Published: 05 Feb. 2026, 07:00
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- LEE JIAN
- [email protected]
Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI
![“Echoes of Ancient Forms of Knowledge” (2021, remade in 2026) by Edgar Calel [LEE JIAN]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2026/02/05/e018b015-262e-4b38-ad57-944eec15a366.jpg)
“Echoes of Ancient Forms of Knowledge” (2021, remade in 2026) by Edgar Calel [LEE JIAN]
Must art endure forever to be meaningful?
Traditionally, museums and collectors have treated all great artworks as timeless objects, meant to last unchanged across generations. But a quietly radical exhibition now open at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) questions — and challenges — this fundamental notion through a show centered on art that decomposes in real time.
Known as decay art, or auto-destructive art, it is a form of artistic practice in which change, breakdown and disappearance are intentionally built into the work. Rather than resisting damage or aging, artists allow materials to weaken, rot or dissolve over time.
The exhibition, titled “Sak-da: The Poetics of Decomposition,” takes its name from the Korean verb sakda, primarily meaning to change shape or break down due to age, while also carrying connotations of fermentation and the development of flavor. Drawing on this dual definition, the exhibition identifies decay art as a major body of contemporary art that highlights beauty in vulnerability and the ethical possibilities of coexisting with time and all living beings.
![One of nine Japanese Kusōzu paintings, depicting a female body's decay [LEE JIAN]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2026/02/05/8f8bad5d-869b-4040-8d63-9a1d8c5a92bb.jpg)
One of nine Japanese Kusōzu paintings, depicting a female body's decay [LEE JIAN]
However, different forms of decay art have existed for centuries.
Japan's Kusōzu, for instance, is a genre of Buddhist paintings from the 13th century that depict the decay of a woman's corpse in nine visceral images, historically used as a form of "aversion therapy" for Buddhist monks, aimed at overcoming sexual desire and attachment to the human body.
Europe's Vanitas and Memento Mori paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries used decay-related symbols like skulls, wilting flowers and smoking candles to emphasize the vanity of earthly pleasures and inevitability of death.
Italy’s Arte Povera movement in the 1960s and 70s rejected polished materials in favor of earth, plants, cloth and industrial waste — substances that naturally change or degrade — to challenge commercialism and blur the boundary between art and life.
Decay art has also been a subject of overtly subversive art. Damien Hirst’s “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” (1991), for example, presents an actual dead shark preserved in formaldehyde, confronting viewers with mortality and the inevitability of decay. Lee Bul’s “Majestic Splendor” (1991–97) consists of raw, rotting fish sequinned and sealed in transparent bags, invoking bodily vulnerability and Korean attitudes toward female sexuality.
More recently, decay art — contrary to its name — has become more closely tied to life, intersecting with bio-art, ecological art and sustainability-driven practice. This is the lineage MMCA foregrounds.
Lee Eun-jae’s “Now Polish the Corners of Geundae” (2023), painted with egg yolk, hangs at the entrance to the exhibition’s “Prologue.” By working with egg yolk, the artist intends to relay the inherent limitations of painting as a medium, both physically and figuratively, as a form of expression.
![“Now Polish the Corners of Geundae” (2023) by Lee Eun-jae LEE JIAN]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2026/02/05/5d1824b5-8f6e-4f68-bd07-97779273cff7.jpg)
“Now Polish the Corners of Geundae” (2023) by Lee Eun-jae LEE JIAN]
Composed of numerous small canvases, each panel carries a subtly different shade of yellow derived from the egg, already cracked and fading in places upon close inspection. Etched across the work is the artist’s account of a recurring dream of failure and the necessity of accepting one’s limits. Yet the luminous yellows suggest not resignation, but an unrelenting effort to continue working within — and against — those limits.
The exhibition then opens into a white-cube gallery hall filled with mounds of fresh, pillowy soil. Asad Raza’s “Absorption” is a “worlding project” that involves creating, maintaining and distributing artificial fertile soil made from waste, dubbed “neosoil,” within exhibition spaces. In the Seoul edition, the soil is produced using fried chicken bones, in collaboration with Seoul National University’s Soil Biogeochemistry Lab. Visitors are encouraged to take a bagful home for their potted plants, gesturing toward an inherent collectivity — artists and non-artists, humans and non-humans alike — involved in the process of decomposition.
![“Absorption” by Asad Raza [LEE JIAN]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2026/02/05/b6c413c5-ef34-44e6-949d-18174bcf8daf.jpg)
“Absorption” by Asad Raza [LEE JIAN]
“Act 1” of the exhibition underscores time as a central element of decay-based practice. Each work appears to operate on its own ticking clock, unfolding according to material processes beyond human control.
Lee Eun-kyung’s disappearing mural “Light of Vanishing,” for instance, is painted with spirulina pigment extracted from marine algae — a substance highly sensitive to light and therefore destined to fade. Yuko Mohri’s “Decomposition” generates light and sound using energy produced by rotting fruit; as moisture levels shift, the energy flow changes, altering the behavior of the connected bulbs and components. Mohri represented Japan at the 2024 Venice Biennale.
![“Decomposition” by Yuko Mohri [LEE JIAN]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2026/02/05/edc5cb5c-39d9-4533-834f-b4bcb14f8616.jpg)
“Decomposition” by Yuko Mohri [LEE JIAN]
At the end of this section, Delcy Morelos’ immersive installation “El oscuro de abajo” offers a counterintuitive pause in which time appears to stop. Unfolding in a pitch-dark, cavern-like space made of soil, the work questions land not as an object of extraction or ownership, but as a living being. As visitors move deeper inside, vision fades while the sense of smell heightens — earth mixed with cinnamon and cloves. In the darkness, time feels suspended, and the self dissolves into the overwhelming presence of the ground itself.
“Act 2” greets visitors with a pungent, almost funky aroma. The section emphasizes the multiple participants involved in decay art — not only human artists, but also microorganisms, insects and plants.
Dan Lie’s works, for example, emerge from collaborations between fabric, jars, dried flowers, fermented liquids, insects and fungi, challenging the notion that humans are the sole bearers of creativity. Instead, non-human communities are positioned as active agents of artistic production.
![Works by Dan Lie and Edgar Calel are on display at ″Sak-da: The Poetics of Decomposition″ exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Jongno District, central Seoul, during a press preview on Jan. 29. [YONHAP]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2026/02/05/92bdc7eb-b5ce-4b0a-a61d-83b62e69f3bb.jpg)
Works by Dan Lie and Edgar Calel are on display at ″Sak-da: The Poetics of Decomposition″ exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Jongno District, central Seoul, during a press preview on Jan. 29. [YONHAP]
Across from Lie’s installations, Edgar Calel’s “Echoes of Ancient Forms of Knowledge” (2021, remade in 2026) is composed of various fruits and vegetables — wilted celery stalks, overripe black bananas, collapsed watermelons, pears and pomegranates — arranged atop rocks as offerings to the Maya-Kaqchikel artist’s ancestors.
The work was shown at the 2021 Frieze London art fair, though it was never intended for sale. When Tate Liverpool later inquired about acquiring it, a rare agreement was reached where the institution does not own the piece outright, but serves as its custodian, supporting the Mayan ritual necessary to activate the work and the community whose practice completes it.
More often, however, decay art has been met with institutional and market rejection.
Lee Bul’s fish installation, for instance, was removed from New York’s Museum of Modern Art after visitors complained about the stench; Lee Eun-jae, who paints with egg yolk, refuses to sell her works altogether, explaining that because they will inevitably rot and break down, it doesn't hold commercial value; the MMCA itself has rejected decay-based works in the past, citing concerns over safe storage, a point acknowledged during the exhibition’s press conference.
“As repositories of timeless masterpieces, museums have long devoted themselves to preserving the value of great works unchanged,” MMCA curator Lee Joo-yeon said. “This practice of sakda asks whether museums are prepared to embrace works that choose to decay in order to co-live with diverse beings beyond humans. In these uncertain times, can we recognize that what is needed may not be better conservation, but better ways to decompose?”
On a more individual level, decay-based art mirrors an aspirational mode of being, muhaehan saram, that has recently gained traction among young people in Korea. Translated as “harmless person,” the term describes a gentle, pure or non-threatening presence in an overstimulated world. More than passive, it rejects calculation and strategy, favoring presence over impact, and connection over the desire to be remembered as singular or indispensable.
At its core, decay-based art, like the “harmless person,” simply hopes to coexist and do no harm.
Well now, just imagine that.
!["Grass Man" by Gosari are on display outside MMCA as part of the ″Sak-da: The Poetics of Decomposition″ exhibition on Jan. 2. [LEE JIAN]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2026/02/05/27c9608e-226a-402d-a529-422cfa4b1e45.jpg)
"Grass Man" by Gosari are on display outside MMCA as part of the ″Sak-da: The Poetics of Decomposition″ exhibition on Jan. 2. [LEE JIAN]
BY LEE JIAN. [[email protected]]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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