스킵네비게이션

View of Dadaepo Beach, the main venue for Sea Art Festival 2025

September 2, 2025 – The Busan Biennale Organizing Committee has released the full list of participating artists for Sea Art Festival 2025 (September 27 – November 2, 2025), titled Undercurrents: Waves Walking on the Water and taking place on the picturesque shores of Busan. Led by co-artistic directors Keumhwa Kim and Bernard Vienat, the exhibition spans four continents, with 23 artists and collectives (38 artists in total) presenting site-specific works, performances, and related programs at various locations including Dadaepo Beach, Morundae, Gouni Ecological Trail, and the Dadae Incineration Plant.

Latest Artists Announced

With 13 highlight artists and collectives having been previously announced, the newly revealed participants are set to expand the exhibition’s scope and inclusiveness through collaborations with diverse local communities and artistic media, presenting fresh interpretations that reveal invisible currents in and around Dadaepo Beach. Highlights include Viron Erol Vert (Türkiye/USA), presenting a multisensory, site-specific installation at the Former Molwoon Coffeeshop at the edge of Morundae. His work – a curved form of fabric, reminiscent of biological tentacles – reflects the myths, memories, and communal flows of the area, whose name means “a place engulfed by clouds.”

Artist, researcher, and educator Antje Majewski (Germany) explores the power of imagination through her collaborative efforts with Korean paleontologist Gi-Soo Nam, through which she has rendered over 50 imaginative drawings of ancient marine organisms and fossils that may have once existed in the Busan area – presented in collaboration with students of Busan National University’s Department of Fine Arts.

OMIJA (Korea), a collective consisting of four artists and a tree doctor based between Busan and Gyeongnam, engages playfully with the realities of life on Earth, constantly moving forward through sustainable living and natural cycles. Their latest work, “Dadaepo Roll,” invites visitors to collectively roll a massive ball made from natural materials gathered along the Nakdonggang River, and includes a competition element. Moreover, Jin Lee (Korea), an artist and art technician based in Berlin and Busan, creates digital interactive environments using computing systems and electronic circuits. In collaboration with researchers from the Korea Institute of Ocean Science & Technology, Lee will reconstruct historical shoreline changes at Dadaepo inside Dadaepo Beach Station, using tidal data from the 16th century to the present day. Created in collaboration with Busan Transportation Corporation, the work captures landscapes where climate, memories, and changes intertwine as time flows.

Paula Proaño Mesías (Ecuador) explores the bonds between human and more-than-human beings through the act of playing. Visitors will be able to freely handle sculptural works inspired by organisms living in Dadaepo, fostering a sense of solidarity with these life forms. Meanwhile, Mathias Kessler and Ahmet Civelek (Austria & Türkiye/USA) investigate the geopolitical context of waste and the narratives of industrial materials after disposal. Their collaborative work reassigns aesthetic and political value to discarded materials, presenting an artwork measuring over 10 meters woven from waste packaging and trash collected across Busan.

Exploring “Undercurrents” through Various Genres

Grounded in the concept of “Undercurrents”, Sea Art Festival 2025 Undercurrents: Waves Walking on the Water delves into the invisible flows and ecological rhythms that lie beneath the surface of water. The topography of Dadaepo, where mountains, rivers, and the sea converge, becomes an ecological laboratory and a space of collective memory where unseen forces intersect. Twenty-three participating artists and collectives lead audiences into these hidden currents, transforming them into unforgettable sensory experiences through sculpture, installation, video, and performance.

The exhibition is co-directed by Keumhwa Kim and Bernard Vienat, with the assistance of Sara Kim, who contributed to the early planning of the festival and has been serving as a curatorial advisor. Together, Kim and Vienat—working between Berlin, Seoul, and Geneva—present an experimental and participatory exhibition that interweaves nature and art, rooted in the unique sense of place that defines Dadaepo. Installation of the works for Sea Art Festival 2025 will begin on September 8, followed by an official opening ceremony on September 26. The exhibition opens to the public on September 27. Further details can be found on the official Sea Art Festival 2025 website (https://www.saf2025.org/).

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Appendix

Full List of Participating Artists and Collectives

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

Instagram & Facebook: @busanbiennale