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.
Amalie SMITH
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관리자 2020-09-05 15:36
Born 1985 in Copenhagen, Denmark
Lives in Copenhagen
Amalie SMITH, Clay Theory, 2019, Stereoscopic 3D film, active 3D glasses, 18min
Courtesy of the artist
Amalie SMITH was educated at The School of Writing and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and continues to work with creative writing and art alike. In SMITH’s practice, technology and research merge with art and visual aesthetics. She shows us how prehistory offers a portal that can help us understand not just our present, but our future too. The questions we ask ourselves about modern technology and our perception of life are not necessarily new, even if the technologies involved are. The terracotta sculptures exemplify the alluring and terrifying aspects of this issue because they are potentially either more or less alive than they first appear to be.
The 3D film Clay Theory is a meditation on the link between life and clay. The focal point of the film is a group of terracotta figurines: small human figures from the Cypriot Bronze Age, shaped out of reddish-brown fired clay. They can be seen on display at the Cyprus Museum, an archaeological museum in Nicosia, Cyprus. In the film, the terracotta figurines become the center of a speculative axis that dates all the way back to the origins of life on a barren planet and extends out into a post-human future where man-made life is a reality.