스킵네비게이션

Installation view of participating artist Marco Barotti's work at the Sea Art festival 2025 

©Busan Biennale Organizing Committee. All rights reserved.

September 26, 2025 – Open from tomorrow, September 27, until November 2, 2025, the Busan Biennale Organizing Committee is proud to present Sea Art Festival 2025, Undercurrents: Waves Walking on the Water. Led by co-artistic directors Keumhwa Kim and Bernard Vienat, the Festival presents 46 site-specific works from 23 artists and collectives at locations around Dadaepo Beach, Busan, including Gouni Ecological Trail, Morundae Observatory Deck Trail, the Former Dadae Incineration Plant, and the Former Molwoon Coffeeshop. Transforming the coastal landscape into a living canvas, these locations function as "interstitial zones", representing the thresholds where saltwater and freshwater, nature and humanity, and past and present traverse.

 

Plastique Fantastique, POLYMETER, 2025, polyurethane film, kelp, sound, ventilator, 350 x 600 x 600 cm

©Busan Biennale Organizing Committee. All rights reserved.

Exhibition Highlights

Inspired by the unique landscape of Dadaepo Beach, Sea Art Festival 2025 returns to the area after six years. In Saha-gu, where Mount Ami, the estuary of the Nakdong River, and the South Sea converge, streams of different densities continuously collide and intermingle, generating ever-shifting ecological and cultural narratives. Against this dynamic backdrop, the festival explores the traces of industrialization and the landscapes of recovery, articulating them through the language of contemporary art.

 

Hyeong-Seob Cho’s installation The Prolonged Transreal takes inspiration from the Former Dadae Incineration Plant, a site that has remained closed for 12 years. Through the presence of a blue rock thrush, the artist reimagines the abandoned site as a lens through which to perceive Dadaepo’s layered temporality.

 

Marco Barotti dove into the Busan coast to capture the acoustic landscape of marine life. Combined with the traditional fishing chant Huri sori, the recordings form Sonic Drift, an installation of six horn-shaped biodegradable speakers along the Morundae Observatory Deck Trail.

Mathias Kessler and Ahmet Civelek, closely collaborating with local residents, reweave discarded packaging and plastic waste from Busan into a vibrant textile carpet stretching over 10 meters - situating these materials within broader narratives of the climate crisis and in the age of the Plastisphere, proposing a shared story of resilience and coexistence.

 

Olaf Holzapfel constructs a monumental pavilion at Dadaepo Beach in collaboration with local carpenters and students from Pusan National University, using natural materials such as reed and timber. Inspired by the concept of the ecotone—the shifting threshold where sea and mudflat converge—the work embodies cycles of continual emergence, transformation, and renewal.

 

Antje Majewski, working with the public and students from Pusan National University’s Korean Painting Department, presents an evolving visual language of ancient life forms that might once have inhabited Dadaepo in A Painting Evolution.

 

OMIJA has collected mixed plants and seeds from the Nakdong River estuary to form a large sphere titled DADAEPO ROLL. Invited into this playful space of symbiosis—between the joy of humans rolling the ball and the survival instinct of plants dispersing their hidden seeds—visitors are encouraged to physically engage with the work.

 

Marie Griesmar’s work, installed beneath the waters of Dadaepo Beach (East), can only be encountered by wearing a snorkel and entering the sea as part of a participatory workshop.

 

Uriel Orlow presents a distinctive program next to the Gouni Ecological Trail, in which visitors read books aloud to plants, creating an unusual encounter where the language of text intertwines with the breath of local ecology.

 

Jeewi Lee & Phillip C. Reiner magnify grains of sand from Dadaepo, Mallorca, and New York 1,000 times to expose the overlooked histories embedded in this fragile resource.

 

Plastique Fantastique present POLYMETER, a monumental work composed of kelp membranes—sourced from Busan’s coastal region of Ki-Jang—encased in polyurethane. By combining plastics of different origins, the work visualizes the contradictions and reversed flows of plastic circulation that define our present era.

 

Exhibition view of the Sea Art Festival 2025 ©Busan Biennale Organizing Committee. All rights reserved.

Immersive Programs, Encounters and Conversations

A wide range of accompanying programs will engage all the senses, moving beyond passive viewing to offer immersive experiences, including workshops, performances, guided tours, discussions and conversations, and children’s activities.

 

Rich interdisciplinary exchange will also be fostered through Discussions & Conversations programs. In collaboration with Buhm Soon Park (Director, Center for Anthropocene Studies, Endowed Chair Professor, KAIST), world-renowned scholars including Jan Zalasiewicz (University of Leicester), Jürgen Renn (Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology), and Julia Adeney Thomas (Notre Dame University) will join roundtables and lectures exploring how art and science can respond to the climate crisis. Local activists, sociologists, and scientists will also take part, while opening week will feature performances by participating artists, amplifying the immediacy and resonance of the festival.

 

General admission runs from September 27 to November 2, open daily from 10am to 6pm, free of charge. For full details on programs and registration, please visit the official website: https://www.saf2025.org/en

 

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Busan Biennale Organizing Committee Website: http://www.busanbiennale.org/

Sea Art Festival 2025 website: https://www.saf2025.org/

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