Gwangju, South Korea — What begins as the story of a pink dog escaping its master becomes something far more unsettling in Korean artist Ru Kim’s latest installation: a surreal exploration of power, control, identity and what happens when the roles between the powerful and the controlled begin to collapse.
Titled “Tails of Courage, or the Master’s Pirouette” (2026), the work is being presented as part of “The Look is A Li(k)e,” the Italian Pavilion exhibition at the 16th Gwangju Biennale, currently on view at Donggok Museum. The exhibition brings together three Italian artists and two South Korean artists to examine identity, appearance, relationships and the ways people are shaped by social and cultural expectations.
Inside Kim’s installation, visitors encounter an apparently empty stage framed by pink velvet curtains, a soft carpet and moving lights. There are no conventional performers. Instead, a four-channel soundscape introduces the characters: Courage, a pink dog who has escaped an oppressive master; the master searching for the missing dog; and the constantly moving light that appears to take on a character of its own.
The story takes an unexpected turn when the master, desperate to reclaim Courage, begins imitating the animal—crawling, barking and ultimately developing a tail.
The reversal transforms what could have been a simple escape story into an examination of who holds power, who is expected to obey and how dependent authority can become on the very people it attempts to control. The Italian Pavilion’s official description similarly presents the work as an exploration of authority and identity, with the master’s attempt to become like Courage exposing the instability of the relationship between the two.
When the stage light becomes a character
One of the most distinctive elements of Kim’s installation is its lighting.
Rather than functioning simply as background illumination, the moving light becomes an active presence in the work. Kim has described it as the installation’s main character because it appears to speak, move, change color and follow visitors through the space. The lighting was created in collaboration with light designer Kimju Seul-kee.
That choice reinforces one of the central ideas behind the installation: even elements normally considered secondary can acquire agency when the established order is disrupted.
Courage began with a bigger question
The dog Courage is part of Kim’s continuing “Courage” project, which developed through workshops involving university students in France and Korea.
The project draws partly from Courage the Cowardly Dog, the animated television character, while also engaging with Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children. Kim uses these references to examine what courage means when simply surviving is not enough and when change requires people to act.
The artist’s wider practice has repeatedly questioned established structures of authority. In a 2026 performance presented at Art Sonje Center, Kim explored courage through relationships between humans and nonhuman beings while examining structures connected to hierarchy, colonialism and anthropocentrism.
From escape to resistance
Earlier chapters of the Courage project imagined the dog leaving its master and finding other dogs, eventually forming a community and remembering the fear that existed before their escape.
The master, meanwhile, cannot accept the loss of control.
That relationship becomes central to Kim’s artistic investigation: if authority depends on someone remaining beneath it, what happens when that person—or animal—walks away?
Kim’s work does not offer an easy answer. Instead, it uses theatrical absurdity and role reversal to make viewers question their own reactions to hierarchy and obedience.
A recurring interest in rewriting power
The themes in Tails of Courage extend beyond the current installation.
Kim’s 2024 solo exhibition “I KNOW WHAT I’VE DONE” revisited a fifth-century legend involving St. Julius and snakes on an island in northern Italy. The artist reimagined the story to question how religious and colonial narratives can portray certain people, animals or communities as inferior or threatening.
That approach—taking a familiar story and asking what might happen if its power structure were reversed—has become an important part of Kim’s practice.
Kim has also engaged with hydrofeminism, an approach that emphasizes the interconnectedness of human and nonhuman life through water and challenges assumptions about fixed hierarchies between species and people.
Part of a wider conversation at Gwangju
The Italian Pavilion places Kim’s work alongside artists exploring related questions about identity, visibility, discipline and relationships.
According to the pavilion organizers, The Look is A Li(k)e examines how appearance can shape perception, recognition and belonging in an increasingly image-driven world. The exhibition features five artists—three from Italy and two from South Korea—and runs from September 5, 2026, through February 14, 2027 at Donggok Museum in Gwangju.
The wider 16th Gwangju Biennale, meanwhile, is organized around the theme “You Must Change Your Life,” with a broader emphasis on transformation, interdependence and relationships between human and nonhuman worlds.
For Ru Kim, the escaped dog is therefore more than a character.
Courage becomes a way to ask an uncomfortable question: When someone escapes the role imposed on them, does power disappear—or does it simply transform into something else?
And perhaps that is the real twist behind the pink dog’s escape: the story may not ultimately be about running away from power, but about discovering who you become once someone else no longer gets to decide who you are.
WWC ONE MEDIA G,A
