스킵네비게이션

 

 

 

 

(Image: poster of the Busan Biennale 2026. Courtesy of Busan Biennale.)

 
 

BUSAN, 28 August 2026 - The Busan Biennale Organizing Committee announces the opening of Busan Biennale 2026, Dissident Chorus , which will take place from 29 August to 1 November 2026 across Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, Space OneZ and Former Busan Nam High School.

 

 

Bringing together 46 Artists/Teams from 22 countries, the exhibition spans installation, sound, performance, moving image, sculpture and other media. Co-Artistic Directors Evelyn Simons and Amal Khalaf, selected through an international open call that attracted more than 70 applications, have developed the exhibition through their respective practices across contemporary art, performance, sound and community-based work.

Of the Biennale, Simons and Khalaf said: “This is a chorus without a conductor, a messy, generous aligning of voices. It invites you to tune in to what persists beneath official stories.”

 

 

 

 

Dissident Chorus explores how different bodies and voices can come into relation through sound. Across the three venues, audiences encounter practices that consider how sound gathers people, carries memory, and has historically generated forms of resistance and solidarity. At a time when public language is often emptied out through repetition or softened until it conceals violence, Dissident Chorus turns instead to sound, song and embodied expression: to breath, rhythm and the simple act of gathering.

A port city shaped by movement, survival and endurance, Busan’s harbours hold sonic histories: the work songs of those who built ships and infrastructure, fished, traded and harvested the sea, protest songs (minjung gayo), as well as shamanic songs (mu-ga) that move with the tides and call to the unseen. These are forms of knowledge that rhythm collective life, sustain relationships and reveal the organising power of sound. Artists from different geographical and cultural contexts respond to these questions through their own approaches to sound, bodies, labour, movement and memory, taking Busan itself as an active context for the exhibition.

 
 

● Aliaskar Abarkas, based between Iran and the UK, presents the site-specific work Spell, connecting the schoolyard of Former Busan Nam High School with Busan Museum of Contemporary Art. Across the schoolyard, recycled textiles in three tonal variations unfold like an expansive musical score. Visitors move across geometric patterns, symbols and motifs associated with protection, encountering the work through their own movement across the site.

● Busan-based artist Hyunsung Park transforms the former cafeteria of Former Busan Nam High School through blue light, sculpture and sound. Tubes and lighting follow the old pipes and architecture of the space, while sculptural forms resembling marine organisms turn the disused cafeteria into an unfamiliar underwater landscape.

● At Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, renowned science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin and artist collective 5D (Sammy Lee, Mark Lowe, Sarah Shin) present Festival, an installation developed from Le Guin’s original maps and drawings. Deep-blue maps, two towers, moving image and textiles come together in an environment that extends Le Guin’s mapmaking into a shared process of world-building.

● Julien Creuzet, the Martinique-born artist who represented France at the 2024 Venice Biennale, presents an installation bringing together sculpture, moving image, poetry and sound, tracing histories of memory, migration and resistance across the Atlantic, including through the legacy of Zumbi dos Palmares, the historic anti-colonial resistance leader in Brazil.

● Filipino artist Joar Songcuya draws on his experience as a seafarer to translate memories of life and labour at sea into painting, drawing and sound. Presented across Busan Museum of Contemporary Art and Space OneZ, his ongoing Seamanship Project comprises more than 100 paintings recording people encountered at sea and scenes of labour on deck. Some of Songcuya’s drawings have also been adapted into transportation card designs in collaboration with Busan Transportation Corporation, extending the project into the everyday movements of visitors and residents across the city.

● Mongolian artist Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar takes over a former classroom at Former Busan Nam High School. Fourteen chair-like sculptures made from wood, metal, synthetic fur and materials collected in Mongolia occupy the grey classroom as if awaiting students. Chairs sourced from an outdoor market in Ulaanbaatar and field recordings from the site bring everyday rhythms into the room, turning the classroom into a space where traces of memory, labour and learning coexist.

 

 

 

 

Public programmes form an integral part of Busan Biennale 2026. From the opening weekend through the closing of the Biennale, performances unfold across Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, Former Busan Nam High School, Eulsukdo Cultural Center, Gadeokdo and the waters of Busan. Workshops, talks and radio programmes invite artists and audiences to listen, converse and generate new rhythms together.

 

 

●On 29 August, Ultra-red will lead a participatory workshop at Former Busan Nam High School addressing port redevelopment and gentrification through collective listening and dialogue. Later that afternoon, live performances by Nkisi, Aliaskar Abarkas and HyeLim Kim, and Joshua Serafin, among others, will activate the venue. The evening will continue with an after party bringing together participating artists and local DJs.

● On 30 August, the co-artistic directors will present a Curatorial Introduction by Amal Khalaf and Evelyn Simons at Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, introducing the exhibition’s conceptual framework, research and curatorial approach.

● Julian Abraham “Togar” presents Drummer’s Gonna Drum at Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, connecting memories of Run Island and Manhattan through live drumming and shared resonance.

● Later that day, Sojung Jun will present opera performance I Do Nine-Tailed Fox at Eulsukdo Cultural Center. Drawing on the ecofeminist writings of Hur Soo-kyung and the myth of the nine-tailed fox, the work revisits the histories of Koryo-saram migration and survival through pansori, operatic vocals, saenghwang, North Korean gayageum, moving image and other musical forms.

● Tianzhuo Chen and Siko Setyanto present Ocean Cage at Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, a large-scale performance combining choreography, ritual, sound, visual spectacle and collective action, bringing together mythology, spirituality, contemporary subcultures and cross-cultural exchange.

● In October, Eunji Cho’s street parade will travel from the Cheonghak Pier Area to Former Busan Nam High School, joined by the Dadaepo Hurisori Preservation Association and art spaces and cultural practitioners based in Busan.

● Further programme include Lee Dong-Keun’s Gadeokdo Birdsong Music Festival , which brings participants together to listen to the natural sounds of Gadeokdo and create a collective sound work, and Joon Yoo’s noise score , a participatory workshop for children aged four to six at Busan Museum of Contemporary Art.

 

 

Throughout the Biennale, Radio Revolution will present DJ mixes, live broadcasts, interviews, conversations and podcasts with participating artists and musicians, extending the exhibition’s concerns to audiences beyond the venues.

During Frieze Seoul, Busan Biennale × Frieze Film Seoul 2026 will take place at SONGEUN in Seoul, presenting moving-image works by artists participating in Busan Biennale 2026 and extending the curatorial concerns of Dissident Chorus into the city.

Further programmes details and registration information are available via the official Busan Biennale 2026 website.

 

 

 

 

Opening hours of the venues are 10am–6pm, Tuesday to Sunday. The venues are closed on Mondays and will remain open on public holidays and during the Chuseok holiday period.

 

 

Docent tours are available on a first-come, first-served basis without advance booking. At Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, tours depart from the first-floor exhibition entrance at 11am, 12pm, 2pm, 3pm, 4pm and 5pm from Tuesday to Sunday. At Former Busan Nam High School, tours take place at 11:30am, 1:30pm and 3:30pm. Docent tours are not available at Space OneZ. Visitors can also access a multilingual Audio Guide via QR code.

 

 

A free shuttle bus connects the three venues throughout the exhibition period, except on Mondays. The route runs from Busan Museum of Contemporary Art → Space OneZ → Former Busan Nam High School. Buses depart Busan Museum of Contemporary Art at 11am, 2pm and 4:30pm; Space OneZ at 12pm and 3pm; and Former Busan Nam High School at 12:30pm and 3:30pm. The final 4:30pm shuttle from Busan Museum of Contemporary Art terminates at Space OneZ due to venue closing times. Timings may vary depending on traffic conditions.

  

Admission to Busan Museum of Contemporary Art is KRW 16,000 for adults, KRW 8,000 for teenagers and military personnel, and KRW 5,000 for children. Tickets can be purchased through NOL Ticket or at the ticket desk on the first floor of Busan Museum of Contemporary Art. Groups of 20 or more may receive discounted admission with advance booking through the official website. Admission to Space OneZ and Former Busan Nam High School is free.

 

 

 

  

5D (Sammy Lee, Mark Lowe, Sarah Shin) (Canada and United Kingdom), Aliaskar Abarkas (Iran / United Kingdom), Alison Nguyen (United States), Bhenji Ra (Australia), Brahim Tall (Belgium), Dew Kim (South Korea), Drexciya / Abu Qadim Haqq (United States), Éric Baudelaire (France), Eunji Cho (South Korea), Fatima Kaleem Khan (Pakistan), Guely Morató Loredo (Bolivia), Heaven Baek (South Korea), Hyunsung Park (South Korea), Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar (Mongolia), Joar Songcuya (Philippines), Joon Yoo (South Korea), Joshua Serafin (Philippines), Jota Mombaça (Brazil), Julian Abraham “Togar” (Indonesia), Julien Creuzet (France), Kamala Ibrahim Ishag (Sudan), Lala Rukh (Pakistan), Lara Ögel (Türkiye), Lee Dong-Keun (South Korea), Luiz Roque (Brazil), Minouk Lim (South Korea), Mira M. Yang (Germany), Moe Satt (Myanmar), Natasha Tontey (Indonesia), Nkisi (Belgium), R.I.P. Germain (United Kingdom), Shuang Li (China), Sojung Jun (South Korea), Suki Seokyeong Kang (South Korea), Sungeun Kim (South Korea), Sungsil Ryu (South Korea), Tai Shani (United Kingdom), Tanat Teeradakorn (Thailand), The House of Korean Protest Songs (South Korea), Tianzhuo Chen (China), Tom Hallet (Belgium), Ultra-red (Multinational), Umi Ishihara (Japan), Ursula K. Le Guin (United States), Yazan Khalili (Palestine), and Zahra Malkani (Pakistan).

 

Media Contact: pr@busanbiennale.org

Micro website: https://busanbiennale2026.com/

Instagram: @busanbiennale

Facebook: @busanbiennale