Busan Biennale
The Busan Biennale is a biannual international contemporary art show that integrated three different art events held in the city in 1998: the Busan Youth Biennale, the first biennale of Korea that was voluntarily organized by local artists in 1981; the Sea Art Festival, an environmental art festival launched in 1987 with the sea serving as a backdrop; and the Busan International Outdoor Sculpture Symposium that was first held in 1991. The biennale was previously called the Pusan International Contemporary Art Festival (PICAF) before it launched.
The biennale has its own unique attribute in that it was formed not out of any political logic or need but rather the pure force of local Busan artists’ will and their voluntary participation. Even to this day their interest in Busan's culture and its experimental nature has been the key foundation for shaping the biennale’s identity.
This biennale is the only one like it in the world that was established through an integration of three types of art events such as a Contemporary Art Exhibition, Sculpture Symposium, and Sea Art Festival. The Sculpture Symposium in particular was deemed to be a successful public art event, the results of which were installed throughout the city and dedicated to revitalizing cultural communication with citizens. The networks formed through the event have assumed a crucial role in introducing and expanding domestic art overseas and leading the development of local culture for globalized cultural communication. Founded 38 years ago, the biennale aims to popularize contemporary art and achieve art in everyday life by providing a platform for interchanging experimental contemporary art.
LEE Seulgi
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관리자 2020-09-05 15:16
Born 1972 in South Korea
Lives in Paris, France
Seulgi LEE, U : Cat washing it's face. = To rush job., 2020
Re-interpretation of Korean blanket in collaboration with Seong-yeon Cho, Tongyeong Nubi artisan
Seulgi LEE © Adagp Paris 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Hyundai Seoul. Commissioned by Busan Biennale 2020
The work of Seulgi LEE blurs the boundary between objects and humans and forefronts their mutuality. After all, we are all shapes, colors, languages, and materials that interfere with each other. What would happen if we considered our interrelations as a playful synergy? LEE’s work seeks to invent a new grammar like the poems of KIM Hyesoon.
Blanket Project U has been ongoing for five years. It is like a game in which she translates words and Korean proverbs in such a way that they could constitute a new language capable of multiple interpretations, like a musical partition somehow. A red circular form with orange, lilac, and lemon green parts on a blue cocoon shape is aversion of LEE’s Korean saying “cat washing its face”, which means to rush a job. The spiritual simplicity of the motif could also evoke a sun encountering the planet Earth.
These blankets are made following Nubi traditional technique by a craftsman named Seongyeon Cho (Tongyeong Nubijang) who lives in a city close to the sea, Namhae (the South Sea). Their collaboration is occasion for the artisan to experiment with the technique of Nubi by using vertical or horizontal stitches to create movement within the design of the geometrical shapes and vivid colors of the blanket. Therepetitive gestures of the Nubi technique allow time and body to be integral parts of the symbiosis operated within every “U” form. “U” refers to the river, a bridge, or a blanket covering the body. The blanket is a very intimate object, either used to sleep, keep one warm, or make love. We dream under a blanket. What if our dreams could be influenced by our blankets? What if our blankets could speak? Their form of communication could then be based on the possibility of a communal language, i.e., a language at the frontier of the universal and singular.