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 Echo-DMZ
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관리자 2018-08-30 10:54
Echo-DMZ, Photo Printing, Dimensions variable, 2018, Courtesy of DMZ Museum (Photographs)
YOO Yeun Bok & KIM Yongtae
Echo-DMZ,
The Biennale showcases a rearranged version of Yoo and Kim’s collaborative work Echo (2011), which was submitted to the exhibition ‘DMZ: Road to Peace’ in 2011. During their research the two artists came across propaganda flyers created by the two Koreas on a visit to the DMZ Museum in Goseong, Gyeonggi Province. The museum provided pictures of the flyers to them and the artists then reprinted them and formed a collage in the shape of the Korean Peninsula. During the Korean War, between 50 million and 80 million political propaganda flyers were distributed every month from South to North and vice versa. According to Defense Ministry statistics, the number is about 4 billion. In the collage the artists placed North Korea’s flyers to the south of the 38th parallel and South Korea’s to the north. The same prints will be used for the
Biennale this year but the shape of the collage has changed to the letters DMZ, which are nine meters long in total. Similar to the 2011 version, the letters are divided into two parts and South Korea’s flyers are placed on the upper half and North Korea’s on the lower half. With the DMZ—the symbol of the ideological conflict— in the middle, audiences might hear the echo of the unilateral voices of two Koreas.