SEOUL – A shrill siren pierces a fog-filled room draped in black curtains as a beam of light falls across the face of a visitor, apparently taken aback by the sudden sensory exposure.

A voice then echoes through the room: “You are now inside my work.”

South Korean visual artist Jung Kang-ja’s “Incorporeal Exhibition” is one of the works that has been restored for “Inside other spaces: Environments by women artists 1956-1976” at the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul.

The exhibition also features “environments,” or immersive art works, by ten other women artists from across Asia, Europe and South America, including Judy Chicago, Tsuruko Yamazaki and Aleksandra Kasuba.

In a postwar era centered on paintings and sculptures, where the works of women artists were easily overlooked, immersive art — which is “not placed on a pedestal, hung on a wall, or reduced to a unit of exchange” — ironically provided room for women artists to explore and express themselves freely, according to the museum.

But due to the nature of immersive art, which is often dismantled and removed after an exhibition, traces of their works have largely vanished without proper documentation.

This meant that significant research was necessary to restore the artworks as closely as possible to their original forms.

Andrea Lissoni and Marina Pugliese, who first curated the project at the Haus Der Kunst museum in Munich, worked with researchers to delve into historic records, correspondence and architectural blueprints.

For Kang’s 1970 work, which was included in the project for the first time through the Leeum exhibition, curators revisited archival materials, including published news articles and photographs, and met with the artist’s family to reconstruct her work.

As a result, Kang’s work, which was abruptly dismantled during a 1970 exhibition after it was deemed as political propaganda under the then authoritarian regime, has been brought back to life for the first time in 56 years.

Following the physical restoration, the artworks on display once again come to life through viewers, thanks to the nature of immersive art, which invites viewers to engage with the piece and become part of it.

Yamazaki’s “Red,” a red-lit box modeled after mosquito nets used in Japanese homes and floating 70 centimeters above ground, is one such example.

Installed in a park in Japan, the artwork allowed visitors to enter the box and immerse themselves in the red light, while becoming part of the artwork as shadows visible to those viewing it from outside.

Judy Chicago’s “Feather room,” a circular white chamber filled with 136 kilograms of goose feather, invites viewers to revel in the ethereal experience of walking on a cloud.

“This exhibition … allows environments to be revived as a newly written and living form that transcends the past and the present, without being sealed off as a historic genre,” Kim Sung-won, deputy director of Leeum, said during a press conference.

The exhibition will open next Tuesday and run through Nov. 29.