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.
2012 Ngen-füta-winkul
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관리자 2013-03-25 09:13
NGEN-FÜTA WINKUL
Language often has a material, sculpted presence in Díaz’ work.And as with poetry, words are more than faithful carriers of preordained meanings. They seem to have a life of their own.In this installation, we witness letters gently swaying. Taken together, the letters form the names of nine volcanoes in southern Chile, in an area traditionally inhabited by an indigenous people: the Mapuche.The Mapuche are legendary for many reasons. Their social structure, with its lack of hierarchies and communal property, is a riddle to ethnographers. They are also one of the few American tribes to successfully resist the Spanish, who set out to conquer and colonize present-day Chile starting in the mid-16th century. Remarkably, the Mapuche managed to force a treaty from the conquistadores in 1641, guaranteeing their sovereignty as a nation in the eyes of Spain.In the 19th century, after a long struggle, the Mapuche finally were dispossessed by the Chilean state. Migrants from Europe were sent to settle in their former territories, but conflicts between representatives of the Mapuche and Chile’s state bureaucracy are nevertheless ongoing. Most native peoples now live in the big cities but are generally poor, badly-educated and of low social standing.
The electricity in Díaz’s installation not only makes the letters glow, but also stirs the water in the glass tanks, thereby moving the stones floating on the water’s surface. Each of these volcanic stones carries a letter.the work has the character of a monument, both in its title and formal appearance. In Mapupungun – the language spoken by the Mapuche – Ngen-füta winkul means “Spirit of Own Big Hill”. Indeed, the installation remembers and evokes a spiritual presence. Language (the glowing letters) and territory (the volcanic stones) – as well as the Mapuche’s way of inhabiting their world – are connected by the flow or circulating energy.This installation is of course also an unabashedly artificial device. It has no patience for the romanticizing of native peoples and their supposedly “authentic” lifestyles. Instead, it challenges the contemporary viewer to envision his or her own way of inhabiting a possibly disenchanted world.Dedicated to Aurelio Díaz Mesa (1879-1933), writer, journalist and defender of the rights and culture of the native peoples of Chile.