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.
2018 Flashback
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관리자 2018-08-21 11:56
Flashback, Archival pigment print images, Dimensions variable, 2018, Courtesy of Pilevneli Gallery
Tayfun SERTTAŞ
Flashback
Sertta’s immersive archival installation Flashback (2018) re-presents the photographic work of Maryam Şahinyan, a prominent female portraitist who from 1935 until 1985 operated both against Turkish cultural conservatism, and against the dominance of the male gaze in photography. The 11,000 photographs that Sertta re-presents here sprawl across the museum walls like a vast black and white mosaic, depicting the twentieth century demographic of Istanbul—a demographic that was influenced by the transition from Ottoman rule to the Turkish republic, in 1923. Flashback exemplifies Serttaş’s methdology, which bridges the practise of art-making with that of the writer and researcher. Perhaps most importantly, this work demonstrates how the conservative understanding of artists as transformers of raw material might be deferred, towards broader and more humble processes of recollection.