[K-ART FOCUS] For Ru Kim, dog's escape becomes story of power

JEONNAM-GWANGJU SPECIAL METROPOLITAN CITY — Pink velvet curtains frame an empty stage. A soft, fluffy carpet lies beneath shifting spotlights. There are no performers in Ru Kim’s “Tails of Courage, or the Master’s Pirouette” (2026), but four-channel sound gives the space its cast: Courage, a pink dog who has escaped an oppressive master, the master, who crawls, barks and searches for the missing animal, and a restless light that seems to move with a will of its own. As a voice fills the room, visitors are invited to picture the chase. The master, aching from crawling on knees, finally reaches for what seems to be Courage’s tail and races toward it— only to realize that the tail is growing from their own body. The strange, tragicomic reversal is Kim’s new installation at “The Look is A Li(k)e,” the Italian Pavilion of the 16th Gwangju Biennale — where Kim was invited to join the Italian Pavilion together with another Korean artist. The artist turns narrative into a testing ground for hierarchy: who is allowed to command, who must obey and what becomes possible when