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.
Jean Katambayi MUKENDI
Read 1,535
관리자 2020-09-05 15:49
Born 1974 in Lubumbashi, DR Congo
Lives in Lubumbashi
Jean Katambayi MUKENDI, Afrolampe, 2020, Pen on paper, 100×70cm
Jean Katambayi MUKENDI is a self-taught artist from the Democratic Republic of the Congo whose passion for logic, geometry, and mechanics permeates his work. Touching upon contemporary socio-economic issues through work that straddles art and scientific experiment, he transcends the purely aesthetic to embrace issues related to education, energy and health. To this end MUKENDI focuses on the social environment around him and, based on his findings from long study and research, addresses the daily issues or restrictions faced by African societies.
MUKENDI explores our tendency to think in binaries and the social modalities that are produced as a consequence of this, and asks what equations are assumed by our approach to the world. He himself has spoken about the context of social change and transitions in and around his work, and in his sculptures, installations, and drawings, we see the unique algorithm-based plastic language MUKENDI has created in order to hold an array of social issues. MUKENDI’s work is also informed by his belief that science, fiction, and contemporary myths are all related. Mindful of these connections, he locates and proposes the coordinates of today within the network of social and natural rules and norms that exist or arise out of global economic, political, or educational issues—which may well be a way of asking the questions that make space to imagine the future to come.