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.
Artist Talk 1: Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson
- Date 2024. 8. 17.
- Venue Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, 2F Lecture Room
- Content Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson is an artist living and working in Ghana. She has an interest in the post-production of food in its plasticity, and in non-human agency in artistic production. Recently Thompson explores topography or ‘micro-landscapes’ sampled from the amorphous starch crystalline structures of her post-produced foods through Digital Elevation Modelling (DEM), thereby expanding foods into ambiguous forms, critiquing the genre of ‘food still-life’ in its material and pictorial representations. In the Busan Biennale 2024, Thompson presented commissioned work Kimchi-Waakye (2024), which features a wallpaper food-map and a food Installation. The artist talk with Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson provides deeper insight into her creative process and the concepts behind her innovative works, offering a unique opportunity to engage with her exploration of food, art, and landscape.
Artist Talk 2: Layne Waerea with Youngsook Choi
- Date 2024. 8. 17.
- Venue Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, 2F Lab
- Content Layne Waerea is an Aotearoa New Zealand based artist whose practice involves carrying out performance art interventions in public spaces. These interventions seek to question, challenge and even exploit social and legal ambiguities in the public social. Youngsook Choi is an artist/researcher with a PhD in human geography. Stretching out from the theme of political spirituality, her performances and installations explore intimate aesthetics of solidarity building and collective healing. Collaborating with Metroland Cultures' Brent Biennial through the British Council's Biennials Connect programme, Layne Waerea, a participating artist of Busan Biennale 2024 and Youngsook Choi from Brent Biennial Collective Enquiry, will present on their respective research processes and artistic practices in this artist talk regarding the time spent in Busan. Following the talk, audience members will be invited to participate in Layne Waerea’s Free Promises(2024) performance co-commissioned by the Te Tuhi and the Busan Biennale Organising Committee, 2024 if they wish to.
Artist Talk 3: Ishikawa Mao
- Date 2024. 8. 17.
- Venue Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, B1F
- Content Ishikawa Mao, born and raised in Okinawa, documented the people of Okinawa through photography. Her photo book, Hot Days in Camp Hansen!! (1982), garnered attention for depicting soldiers' daily lives and women challenging social taboos. Her later works critique Okinawa's poverty and marginalised citizens, addressing the region's double colonisation by the Japanese government and the US military. In the Busan Biennale 2024, Ishikawa presents her recent epic photography project The Great Ryukyu Photo Scroll Part 10 (2023), a series of large-scale scrolls, revealing different episodes from Okinawa’s history. It starts from its days of independence and studies the history of Okinawa’s hardships following the Satsuma clan’s invasion of the Ryukyu Kingdom. The artist's talk with Ishikawa Mao provides an intimate look into her creative process and the socio-political contexts that inform her work, offering the audience an opportunity to engage directly with the artist.
Artist Talk 4: Fred Moten & Stefano Harney with Zun Lee
- Date 2024. 9. 8.
- Venue HANSUNG1918 & Online
- Content Fred Moten is a Professor in the Department of Performance Studies at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts. He teaches courses and conducts research in black studies, performance studies, poetics, and critical theory. Stefano Harney is a teacher and writer who is currently Professor of Transversal Aesthetics at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. They are the co-authors of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (2013) and ALL INCOMPLETE (2021). They are members of the Black radical tradition and members of Le Mardi Gras Listening Collective. In this exhibition, they present their works alongside Zun Lee, a visual storyteller, physician, and educator who actively engages between the United States and Canada.
