October 15th-25th, 2026
Opening October 15th, 6PM to 12AM
Mon-Fri 2PM-8PM
Sat-Sun 10PM-8PM
To mark Graphic Days® 2026, the Turin-based communications agency sixeleven is presenting an exhibition on Hangeul, the Korean alphabet, in collaboration with the Korean studio Lift-OFF and the King Sejong Institute in Turin.
The exhibition explores Hangeul as a political achievement, a linguistic system and an extraordinary object of design. The project takes place in a symbolic year: 2026 marks the centenary of Hangeul Day, the day that has celebrated the Korean script every 9 October since 1926.
The exhibition, conceived by sixeleven, begins in 1443, in Korea during the Joseon Dynasty. King Sejong the Great chose at that time not to reform the existing system – based on Chinese characters and accessible only to a narrow elite – but instead invented a completely new one: 14 consonants and 10 vowels capable of representing every sound of the language, easy to learn even without formal education.
It was a revolutionary act even before it was a linguistic one.
Through bilingual display panels, the exhibition traces the long history of Hangeul’s marginalisation, having been branded by the Neo-Confucian elite as a ‘vulgar script’. It then goes on to describe its proclamation as the ‘national script’ following the Gabo reforms of 1894 and its clandestine circulation during the Japanese occupation. It concludes with the role it assumed after the Korean War: that of a symbolic link between two countries that no longer speak to one another.
Ample space is devoted to the structure of the alphabet. The consonants were created through imitation, the vowels from the combination of three elements (heaven, earth, man), and the 11,172 theoretical syllables make up what sixeleven describes as ‘a very orderly chaos’.
It is precisely this Hondon – this controlled chaos – that makes Hangeul an unthinkable compositional resource for those who use the Latin alphabet.
The exhibition follows a circular narrative, beginning with the chaos of the Joseon dynasty, moving on to the creation of Hangeul, addressing Japanese rule and the assertion of Korean national identity, and concluding with the modern-day use of Hangeul as a cultural tool and a means of graphic design.
In 1443, King Sejong invented a new alphabet, Hangeul, to restore order to a country in the grip of chaos.
Hangeul emerged as a fundamental tool for identity and politics, essential for asserting Korea’s autonomy.
An exhibition of works created by students at the King Sejong Institute in Turin.
Lift-Off is a graphic design studio based in Seoul. It uses Hangeul as a tool to bring new forms to life.
Project by:
