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[Press Release] Sea Art Festival 2025 Unveils Theme and First Participating Artists
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관리자 2025-06-30 00:00
- The next edition of Sea Art Festival, titled Undercurrents: Waves Walking on the Water, returns to Dadaepo Beach, announcing 13 highlight artists and collectives from across South Korea, Chile, Switzerland Germany, and beyond.
Representative works of Plastique Fantastique, participating artists in the Sea Art Festival 2025
July 7,2025 - The Busan Biennale Organizing Committee has announced the first list of participating artists for the Sea Art Festival 2025, featuring 13 artists and collectives hailing from South Korea, Chile, Switzerland, Germany, and beyond. Titled Undercurrents: Waves Walking on the Water, the festival will run from September 27 to November 2, 2025. Returning once again to Dadaepo Beach, this year's festival will expand into surrounding locations such as Morundae, Gouni Ecological Trail, and the Dadae Incineration Plant.
Theme: Undercurrents: Waves Walking on the Water
In Undercurrents: Waves Walking on the Water, the term undercurrents refers to "subsurface flows"—invisible forces operating beneath the surface, both ecologically and culturally. The exhibition explores how dialogic rhythms—formed through flows, winds, sounds, humans, and non-human agents—intersect with everyday life. It also asks how these unseen movements can be translated into shared awareness, seeking new forms of connection through sensory and imaginative engagement. Essentially, Waves Walking on the Water poetically personifies waves as sentient beings—an image that invites deeper and more intuitive interpretations.
In Undercurrents: Waves Walking on the Water, the term undercurrents refers to "subsurface flows"—invisible forces operating beneath the surface, both ecologically and culturally. The exhibition explores how dialogic rhythms—formed through flows, winds, sounds, humans, and non-human agents—intersect with everyday life. It also asks how these unseen movements can be translated into shared awareness, seeking new forms of connection through sensory and imaginative engagement. Essentially, Waves Walking on the Water poetically personifies waves as sentient beings—an image that invites deeper and more intuitive interpretations.
First Participating Artists Revealed
The 13 highlight artists and collectives form the conceptual backbone of the exhibition’s overarching themes. Recognized as one of the leading contemporary artists from Latin America, Seba Calfuqueo (Chile), a Mapuche Indigenous multi-media artist and curator, interrogates colonial legacies, challenges cultural stereotypes, and amplifies voices of gender and ecological resistance. Hyeong-seob Cho (South Korea), known for his sensitive responses to disappearing urban and natural landscapes, will present an installation at the Dadae Incineration Plant.
The 13 highlight artists and collectives form the conceptual backbone of the exhibition’s overarching themes. Recognized as one of the leading contemporary artists from Latin America, Seba Calfuqueo (Chile), a Mapuche Indigenous multi-media artist and curator, interrogates colonial legacies, challenges cultural stereotypes, and amplifies voices of gender and ecological resistance. Hyeong-seob Cho (South Korea), known for his sensitive responses to disappearing urban and natural landscapes, will present an installation at the Dadae Incineration Plant.
Olaf Holzapfel (Germany) deeply engages with vernacular architecture, natural materials, and transitional landscapes. In Busan, he will present "Wall", a structural intervention that reimagines the notion of boundary—not as division, but as embrace — while Plastique Fantastique, Berlin- and Seoul-based artistic duo composed of Marco Canevacci (Italy/Germany) and Yena Young (South Korea), challenges the limits of spatial and sensory perception and will unveil a large-scale dome constructed from eco-friendly, biodegradable algae-based materials.
In the performing arts programme, choreographer and dancer Anna Anderegg (Switzerland) explores the dialogue between the body, emotions, and urban environments. In Busan, she will collaborate with local “Ajimmae”, elder women who have long safeguarded the shores of Dadaepo Beach.
Venues: Interstitial Sites at the Edge—Reframing the Sea Art Festival 2025
Returning once again to Dadaepo Beach, this year’s festival will expand beyond the beach to uncover new exhibition venues that reflect the layered and evolving spatial context of the area. Dadaepo Beach, where the freshwater of the Nakdong River meets the saltwater of the South Sea, is known for its rich ecosystems, soft sand, and stunning sunsets. This year, the festival also engages Morundae—a dramatic point where land, sea, and sky converge—as well as the Gouni Ecological Trail, which winds through tidal flats, reed fields, and shifting sand dunes.
Additionally, the Dadae Incineration Plant—constructed in 1998 and decommissioned in 2013—will be repurposed as a site of artistic exploration. Though long forgotten, the facility still bears traces of Busan’s industrial-urban metabolism. Another newly reimagined venue is the Former Molwoon Coffeeshop, located at the entrance of the Morundae coastal walkway. Once a small local cafe, its structure quietly absorbing the layers of time, will reopen its doors to visitors as a space for artistic interpretation.
These locations function not only as exhibition spaces but as "interstitial zones"— thresholds where saltwater and freshwater, nature and humanity, past and present intersect. Rather than fixed boundaries, they reveal invisible presences that emerge at the edge—offering a new landscape shaped by hybridity, circulation, and transformation. The backdrop of Busan offers a unique and immersive setting, allowing audiences to experience the artworks in the context of Busan’s rich culture and geological environment.
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