12th Biennale(2018)
Exhibition
- Period
- : 2018-09-07 ~ 20180-11-11
- Participating Countries
- : 43
- Artists
- : 165
Outline & Program
- Title : Imagined Borders
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- Period : Sep.7(Fri.)~Nov.11(Sun.)2018
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- Hosts : Gwangju Biennale Foundation / Gwangju Metropolitan City
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- Venues : Gwangju Biennale Exhibition Hall, Asia Culture Center, Select Locations in Gwangju Metropolitan City
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2018 Gwangju Biennale Exhibition
Main Exhibition
- The 12th Gwangju Biennale will see 165 artists from 43 different countries participate in a series of seven exhibitions and the GB Commission exploring the political, cultural, physical and emotional concepts of borders in today’s global community. For this edition of the Gwangju Biennale, a collective of 11 curators from around the world will devise a program of thematic exhibitions, in addition to a monumental new program, the GB Commission and a series of Pavilion Projects taking place across the city of Gwangju. Multiple curators from the UK to LA, Singapore to Seoul have brought their diverse perspectives and expertise to the Biennale and collaborated on projects inspired by the concept of Imagined Borders. Based on their expertise in sociology, politics, migration and the refugee experience, the curators confirmed a list of 163 participating artists within seven thematic exhibitions and the GB Commission which will reflect contemporary society and amplify the level of diverse voices in the cultural community. Highlights of the presentation will include the Cuban artist collective Los Carpinteros, Belgian-born and Mexico-based artist Francis Alÿs, Kuwait and Pueto Rico-based curator and artist Alia Farid who devised the first Kuwait Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, and French artist based between Berlin and Algeria, Kader Attia, whose work explores the legacy of migration, colonialism and trade to interrogate the idea of a collective cultural memory. The increase in global visibility for Asian artists is represented through this expanded program of artists from across the continent; including Thailand-born filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival; Shilpa Gupta who explores Asian identity in his work; Ho Tzu Nyen whose Singapore Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale brought an immersive, panoramic view of pre-colonial Singapore to the Italian island; and Yoshimoto Nara, pioneer of Japanese pop art will participate in this year’s Gwangju Biennale.
The GB Commission
- The GB Commission seeks to explore the history of the city of Gwangju and the origin of the Gwangju Biennale, founded to sublimate the scars of the Gwangju Democratization Movement in 1980 into culture and arts. In the process, the Foundation hopes to deliver the Biennale’s ongoing values to audiences far beyond the city limits. Four participating artists, Adrián Villar Rojas, Mike Nelson, Kader Attia and Apichatpong Weerasethakul have been commissioned to develop new site specific works, exploring the historic sites throughout the city of Gwangju in which their work will be displayed.
The Pavilion Project
- The 12th Gwangju Biennale will, for the first time, host a series of Pavilion Projects beginning with three leading international art institutions to connect the Gwangju
region to a wider arts community. The Gwangju Civic Center, Mugaksa Temple, Leekangha Art Museum, and Alternative Space Hothouse will host projects from the Palais de Tokyo,
Helsinki International Artist Program (HIAP), and Philippine Contemporary Art Network (PCAN). The Pavilion Project will be a forum for exchange and promotion between countries
to present emerging artists from their own countries alongside Korean artists.
The point of the exhibition
1) A platform for creating critical discourses on visual culture and knowledge that cross and blur tangible and intangible borders
- The acceleration of globalization and technological innovation has been shaping new borders that are different from existing ones. It has been producing a considerable intensification of deterritorialization in terms of business, economy, identity, religion, security, environment, and power, resulting in psychological, emotional, and generational conflicts, and creating even more complex borders that go beyond geopolitical boundaries.
- Humans who are capable of imagining often create their own borders, dreaming of a better world or a utopia. Because utopia is a “place that cannot be,” it is bound to always fail amid devastation with the traces of the past. We attempt to find alternative ways of thinking to reveal the spaces hidden between these borders in response to global capitalism.
- In particular, when there is a growing necessity to reconsider the complexities of borders in a move away from the simple dichotomy of the past, we intend to articulate the latest issues and challenges that humanity faces, as well as reflect on the past and the present. We also aim to provide a platform for creating critical discourses on visual culture and knowledge that cross and blur both tangible and intangible borders.
2) A collective curating system
- A team of curators organized the exhibition, which is titled, Imagined Borders, and can be divided into seven sections with different subthemes.
- The team consists of renowned curators and scholars from all over the world. They all have been exploring the world’s social, political, and historical phenomenas, migration, and refuge crises by actively curating exhibitions or publishing books.
- By adopting a collective curating system instead of appointing a single art director as in the previous years, we intend to ensure that multiple voices and perspectives are included in this exhibition, which reflects on the past and the present of humanity and creates discourses on what values should be pursued in the future.
- To bring innovative ideas to the Gwangju Biennale, which has been making a paradigm shift in Asia since its foundation in 1995, we have adopted a collective curating system that will ensure that the Gwangju Biennale will remain at the forefront of the exploration of the diversity of contemporary art and culture.
3) A focus on the history and spatiality of Gwangju
- We attempt to shed new light on the “May 18 Democratic Uprising” by discovering the historic sites in Gwangju with a legacy of democracy, human rights, and peace, and turning them into exhibition spaces.
- Considering the symbolic significance of the Gwangju
Biennale Exhibition Hall in Yongbong-dong, which is an important
contributor in the domestic and international art scene, we will
continue to use it as a major exhibition venue along with the Asia
Culture Center.
4) Engages with the public through community programs
- We conduct GB Monthly Gatherings. We also engage local residents and scholars in multidisciplinary programs that blur the boundaries among visual arts, philosophy, politics, history, and science. These programs include a monthly studio visit series called “GB Artist Studio Visits” and a public lecture series called “GB Talks.”
- By organizing various programs, such as an educational
program for teenagers, a contemporary art school on tour, and a
community program, we offer a “place of meeting and interaction”
for invited artists, curators, emerging local artists, local
residents, students, the underprivileged, the marginalized,
immigrants, and teenagers who do not go to school. In doing so,
we aim to achieve a flexible and healthy relationship between
regionality and transregionality.
Imagined Nations / Modern Utopias
Proceeding from the position that the present is informed by the past, Clara Kim will investigate the intersection between modernism, architecture and nation-building in the mid-20th century across different geographies and contexts that explores the desire to find a place in the world and the fate of modern utopian dreams.
| Name | Nationality | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pio Abad | Philippines |
| 2 | Leonor Antunes | Portugal |
| 3 | Alexander Apostol | Venezuela |
| 4 | Alexandre Arrechea | Cuba |
| 5 | Marwa Arsanios | USA |
| 6 | Yto Barrada | France |
| 7 | Louidgi Beltrame | France |
| 8 | Los Carpinteros | Cuba |
| 9 | Shezad Dawood | UK |
| 10 | Alia Farid | Kuwait |
| 11 | Ângela Ferreira | Mozambique |
| 12 | Carlos Garaicoa | Cuba |
| 13 | Tanya Goel | India |
| 14 | Terence Gower | Canada |
| 15 | Kiluanji Kia Henda | Angola |
| 16 | Lais Myrrha | Brazil |
| 17 | Damián Ortega | Mexico |
| 18 | Ram Rahman | India |
| 19 | Marwan Rechamoui | Lebanon |
| 20 | Mauro Restiffe | Brazil |
| 21 | Lawrence Sumulong | USA |
| 22 | Seo Hyun-Suk | South Korea |
| 23 | Amie Siegel | USA |
| 24 | Maria Taniguchi | Philippines |
| 25 | Clarissa Tossin | Brazil |
| 26 | Ala Younis | Kuwait |
Facing Phantom Borders
This section, which has a theme of “Facing Phantom Borders,” attempts to start a conversation with Beyond the Borders, the first Gwangju Biennale. In 1995, the Gwangju Biennale took a positive stance toward a mobility increased by globalization in dreams of a utopian future. Meanwhile, as the entire world faces severe problems with borders, the time has come for the 2018 Gwangju Biennale to reconsider the concepts of borders, social control, alienation, tolerance, humanitarianism, and national security. To reflect on the issues of migration from a multifaceted perspective and to reconsider the meaning of borders and migration in a contemporary sense, this section takes a close look at archives, oral history, and other cultural texts along with the artists who have been working on the themes such as regional instability, nationalism, and deterritorialization. In addition, by introducing personal narratives as opposed to grand narratives on borders, migration, and territories in the Western-centeric worldview, it will prompt visitors to recognize the complexities of history in Asia.
| Name | Nationality | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Apichatpong Weerasethakul | Thailand |
| 3 | Ho Tzu Nyen | Singapore |
| 4 | Rushdi Anwar | Kurdistan-Iraq/Australia |
| 5 | Sawangwongse Yawnghwe | Myanmar/Canada |
| 6 | Shilpa Gupta | India |
| 7 | Jun Yang + Michikazu Matsune | China/Japan/Austria |
| 8 | Dinh Q. Lê | Vietnam/USA |
| 9 | Studio Revolt | USA/Cambodia/Japan |
| 10 | Chia-Wei Hsu | Taiwan |
| 11 | Sutthirat Supaparinya | Thailand |
| 12 | I-na Phuyuthanon | Thailand |
| 13 | Chris Chong Chan Fui | Malaysia |
| 14 | Kader Attia | France |
| 15 | Nipan Oranniwesna | Thailand |
| 16 | Tom Nicholson with Grace Samboh | Australia |
| 17 | Agnieszka Kalinowska | Poland |
| 18 | Rafal Milach | Poland |
| 19 | Piyarat Piyapongwiwat | Thailand |
| 20 | Munem Wasif | Bangladesh |
| 21 | Didem Özbek | Turkey |
| 22 | Superflex | Denmark |
| 23 | Pinar Öğrenci | Turkey |
| 24 | Halil Altindere | Turkey |
| 25 | Svay Sareth | Cambodia |
| 26 | Tiffany Chung | Vietnam/USA |
The Ends: The Politics of Participation in the Post-Internet Age
By focusing on Post-Internet art, this section examines the politics of participation and power, the digital divide, and analyses of worlds with a perpetually threatened access to the Internet or without an Internet access under our current and evolving post-Internet conditions. Along with numerous artists, theorists, writers, and activists, it reflects on Internet access, the unauthorized use of information, hacking, surveillance, and Zach Blas’ “contra-Internet aesthetics.” In line with that, it also gives an insight on virtual money and its ecological consequences, alternative digital platforms, and the potential extinction of the Internet by looking at a variety of artworks in different forms including sculptures, videos, art installations, and performances. The 20th-century Cold War narrative repeats itself by amplifying the political tensions between the United States, Russia, South Korea, and North Korea with this so-called “cybersteroids,” which make Gwangju an even more perfect place for taking the discussion further in 2018.
| Name | Nationality | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ho Rui An | Singapore |
| 2 | Lara Baladi | Lebanon/Egypt |
| 3 | Zach Blas | USA/UK |
| 4 | Shu Lea Cheang | Taiwan/France |
| 5 | Simon Denny | New Zealand/Germany |
| 6 | Sunwoo Hoon | South Korea |
| 7 | Stanya Kahn | USA |
| 8 | Ayoung Kim | South Korea |
| 9 | Kim Heecheon | South Korea |
| 10 | Trevor Paglen | USA |
| 11 | Mark Lotfy | Egypt |
| 12 | Kirill Savchenkov | Russia |
| 13 | Martine Syms | USA |
| 14 | Julia Weist and Nestor Siré | USA/Cuba |
| 15 | Miao Ying | China |
Faultlines
Borrowing the geological concept of “fault,” a crack in the Earth’s crust where rocks on either side of the crack have slid past each other as a result of plate tectonic forces, this section takes a multifaceted approach to contemporary problems that have been causing social, political, and psychological wounds by worsening old cracks or creating new ones. It aims to address the burden on future generations, namely, the symptom of social cleavages, while questioning whether we are heading for an apocalypse in the Anthropocene age, a new epoch defined by humanity’s impact on the Earth’s ecosystem. The artists with different backgrounds will give answers to the problems that humanity faces based on their experiences. Focusing mainly on three aspects, namely, body, environment, and surface, the artworks featured in this section can be viewed as a collective inquiry on Beyond the Borders (1995), the first Gwangju Biennale. Taking a step away from imagining a utopian world without borders, this section will discuss the survival of humanity in depth, in a world where nothing is predictable.
| Name | Nationality | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tara Donovan | USA |
| 2 | Francis Alÿs | Belgium |
| 3 | Byron Kim | USA |
| 4 | Hyangro Yoon | South Korea |
| 5 | Shilpa Gupta | India |
| 6 | Hasan Elahi | Bangladesh |
| 7 | Sarah Abu Abdallah | Saudi Arabia |
| 8 | Aernout Mik | Netherlands |
| 9 | Shitamichi Motoyuki | Japan |
| 10 | Minjung Kim | South Korea |
| 11 | Kcho | Cuba |
| 12 | Nina Chanel Abney | USA |
| 13 | Paolo Cirio | Italy |
| 14 | Inci Eviner | Turkey |
| 15 | Luke Ching | Hong Kong |
| 16 | Yoan Capote | Cuba |
| 17 | Ezra Wube | Ethiopia |
| 18 | Chen Wei | China |
| 19 | Yoshitomo Nara | Japan |
| 20 | Simon Leung | Hong Kong |
| 21 | Xiyadie | China |
| 22 | Seungwoo Back | South Korea |
| 23 | Joongho Yum | South Korea |
| 24 | John Pule | New Zealand |
Returns
With 23 years of history, the Gwangju Biennale has become a pioneering exhibition platform in Asia. This section neither reminisces nor summarizes the history of the Gwangju Biennale, which is celebrating its 12th edition. Instead, it aims to selectively reenact some important moments in Gwangju Biennale’s history from a contemporary point of view by inviting a number of artists, curators, and scholars as “tour guides” who can tell us about those moments. They will be asked to choose artworks, events, or projects from past editions that are the most closely linked to their latest projects. The selected works from past editions will return to the present in different modes of representation/reenactment. This section does not attempt to fossilize the past in an archive but instead aims to make sense of the present by blowing life into an archive (or to let the past linger around the present).
| Name | Nationality | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tom Nicholson | Australia |
| 2 | Agatha Gothe-Snape | Australia |
| 3 | Wrong Solo (Agatha Gothe-Snape & Brian Fuata) | Australia |
| 4 | Ella Sutherland | New Zealand |
| 5 | Koh Nguang How | Singapore |
| 6 | Ho Tzu Nyen | Singapore |
| 7 | Far East Network | South Korea, Singapore, Japan, China |
| 8 | ruangrupa | Indonesia |
| 9 | Yeonkun Kang | South Korea |
| 10 | Lee Ungno | South Korea |
The Art of Survival: Assembly, Sustainability, Shift
The Art of Survival Scape is a joint section on contemporary South Korean art that consists of three parts. Three curators with different interests and preferences focus on each different subtheme through the lens of talented Korean artists including artists from Gwangju and Jeollanam-do, who have been selected through the Gwangju Biennale’s “Portfolio Review Program.” It is not so surprising that this section features a wide range of artworks with different characteristics. Looking at contemporary South Korean art through three different windows and taking a step closer to the reality is an approach worth investing as it embraces, blurs, and crosses microscopic/macroscopic, regional/transregional, and formative/conceptual boundaries that may characterize contemporary Korean art. In addition, this section will channel artistic imagination and behaviors branching out in all directions into one exhibition space while clearly revealing the differences among them. Its three subthemes are as follows:
| Name | Nationality | |
|---|---|---|
| Symmetrical Imagination(curator: Man Seok Kim) | ||
| 1 | KyungHwa Kim | South Korea |
| 2 | SeHee Park | South Korea |
| 3 | HwaYeon Park | South Korea |
| 4 | JeongA Bang+ Akira Tsuboi | South Korea/Japan |
| 5 | JaeKyu Byun | South Korea |
| 6 | MongJoo Son | South Korea |
| 7 | OkHyun An | South Korea |
| 8 | SangHee Yeo | South Korea |
| 9 | YouSeung Jeong | South Korea |
| 10 | Hyungseop Cho | South Korea |
| Momentum Temporary(curator: Sung woo Kim) | ||
| 1 | Suki Seokyeong Kang | South Korea |
| 2 | Yongju Kwon | South Korea |
| 3 | Daum Kim | South Korea |
| 4 | RohwaJeong | South Korea |
| 5 | Seonhee Moon | South Korea |
| 6 | Hyunjoo Heaven Baek | South Korea |
| 7 | Jung Ju An | South Korea |
| 8 | Yongseok Oh | South Korea |
| 9 | Okin Collective | South Korea |
| 10 | Jeongsu Woo | South Korea |
| 11 | Woosung Lee | South Korea |
| 12 | Heeseung Chung | South Korea |
| 13 | Kichang Choi | South Korea |
| 14 | Daejin Choi | South Korea |
| Assembly Place and Non-Place(curator: Chong-Ok Paek) | ||
| 1 | Dongho Kang | South Korea |
| 2 | Sunghong Min | South Korea |
| 3 | SangHwa Park | South Korea |
| 4 | Iljeung Park | South Korea |
| 5 | YunKyoung So | South Korea |
| 6 | Se-young Youn | South Korea |
| 7 | Jeonglok Lee | South Korea |
| 8 | Chanboo Jung | South Korea |
North Korean Art: Paradoxical Realism
Curated as the world’s largest exhibition on socialist realism art, this section consists of more than 40 Joseonhwa, which is also known as North Korean art, including a large-scale painting cocreated by a group of artists. It focuses on Joseonhwa to shed new light on a North Korean socialist art developed in total isolation because of the Cold War and the division of Korea without being able to go beyond the borders. Through art, it is also possible to identify and articulate the current state of the Korean Peninsula, which is divided into two and constrained by the borders. This section will prompt visitors to reflect on the discordance, absurdity, and uniformity derived from such situation while providing a room for discussion on how socialist art can influence our aesthetic experience and way of thinking.
| Name | Nationality | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chang Ho Choe | North Korea |
| 2 | Myong Chol Hong | North Korea |
| 3 | Kwang Chol So | North Korea |
| 4 | Hyok Chol Kim | North Korea |
| 5 | Il Kyong Kim | North Korea |
| 6 | Hyok Im | North Korea |
| 7 | Yong Gun Ko | North Korea |
| 8 | Yu Dam Ro | North Korea |
| 9 | Song Ho Kim | North Korea |
| 10 | Jin Myong Ri | North Korea |
| 11 | Kwang Nam Han | North Korea |
| 12 | Nam Hun Kim | North Korea |
| 13 | Yu Song Kang | North Korea |
| 14 | Yun Hyok Kang | North Korea |
| 15 | Gun Yun | North Korea |
| 16 | Kwang Guk Wang | North Korea |
| 17 | Song Il Nam | North Korea |
| 18 | Byol Jong | North Korea |
| 19 | Hyun Uk Kim | North Korea |
| 20 | Il Kwang Baek | North Korea |
| 21 | Ju Song Rim | North Korea |
| 22 | Yu Song Choe | North Korea |
| 23 | Dong Hwan Kim | North Korea |
| 24 | Chol Ri | North Korea |
| 25 | Song Gun Kim | North Korea |
| 26 | In Sok Kim | North Korea |
| 27 | Chol Kim | North Korea |
| 28 | Yong Ho Cha | North Korea |
| 29 | Ki Song Ri | North Korea |
| 30 | Jae Hyon Ri | North Korea |
| 31 | Yong Man Jong | North Korea |
| 32 | Kil Nam Jang | North Korea |