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.
Busan Biennale 2022 Curatorial Advisors
Christine Tohme
- Christine Tohme is the founding director of Ashkal Alwan, the Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, a Beirut-based non-profit organization established in 1993 and committed to contemporary artistic practice, research, and modes of study. Through Ashkal Alwan, Tohme has organized eight editions of the multidisciplinary platform Home Works: A Forum on Cultural Practices, initiated in 2001 and held every three years in Beirut, and the Home Workspace Program, a tuition-free, ten-months arts study program founded in 2011. She has curated the 13th Sharjah Biennial, Tamawuj (2017), which comprised exhibitions and a public program in two acts in Sharjah and Beirut; a year-long education program in Sharjah; satellite projects in Dakar, Ramallah, Istanbul and Beirut; and an online publishing platform. Tohme is on the boards of Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry and Haven for Artists, a Beirut-based non-profit organization. She has received the UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture (2018); CCS Bard Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence (2015) and a Prince Claus Award (2006). Tohme was born in Beirut, where she continues to live and work. She received a BA in English Literature from the American University of Beirut, and an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Philippe Pirotte© Diana Pfammater
- Philippe Pirotte, adjunct senior curator at the University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) is also affiliated with the Städelschule Frankfurt as professor Art History and Curatorial Studies. He serves on the Documenta-Commission (2019-2022), which selected ruangrupa as the artistic direction of documenta fifteen (2022). Currently he is preparing the first retrospective of Indonesian performance artist Melati Suryodarmo for the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht (2022), as well as the major group exhibition Bandung Spirits, for the Gropius Bau, Berlin. In this context he convened the series of online roundtables The Color Curtain and the Promise of Bandung (2021), focusing on cultural and artistic developments in relation to the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung, Indonesia. Pirotte held the position of rector of the Städelschule and director of kunsthalle Portikus between 2014–2020. Prior to this, he co-founded the Antwerp contemporary art center objectif (1999), and from 2005-2011 he took on the directorship of Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland. Most recently Philippe Pirotte curated Cameroonian artist Bili Bidjocka’s survey show for Savvy Contemporary Berlin, and the group show Arus Balik - From Below the Wind to Above the Wind and Back Again, for the Center for Contemporary Art Singapore (2019). He was member of the curatorial team of the Jakarta Biennale in 2017, and was artistic director of the 2016 edition of La Biennale de Montréal, Canada.
Yuk Hui
- Yuk Hui wrote his doctoral thesis under the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler at Goldsmiths College in London and obtained his Habilitation in philosophy from Leuphana University in Germany. Hui is author of several monographs that have been translated into a dozen languages, including On the Existence of Digital Objects (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics (Urbanomic, 2016), Recursivity and Contingency (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), and Art and Cosmotechnics (University of Minnesota Press, 2021). Since 2014, Hui has been the initiator and convenor of the Research Network for Philosophy and Technology and currently sits as a juror of the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture. He currently teaches at the City University of Hong Kong.