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 Landscape of Khiam #1~11
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관리자 2018-08-21 10:56
Landscape of Khiam #1~11, Photographic print on dibond, 90 x 120 cm, 2007
Wonder Beirut #21,22,17 Photographic print on Diasec, 70 x 106 cm, 1998-2007
Historic Process: The Battle of the Hotels #1, 2003, Photographic print on Diasec, 30 x 210 cm, 1998-2007
Historic Process: The Battle of the Hotels #3, 2003, Photographic print on Diasec , 30 x 153 cm, 1998-2007
Postcards of War, 1997-2006, Postcards on paper, 10 x 15 cm, 1997-2006, All courtesy of In Situ – Fabienne Leclerc and the artists
Joana HADJITHOMAS & Khalil JOREIGE
Landscape of Khiam #1~11
Wonder Beirut #21,22,17
Historic Process: The Battle of the Hotels #1,
Historic Process: The Battle of the Hotels #3
Postcards of War
In the Busan Biennale, Hadjithomas and Joreige present Postcards of War or The Story of a Pyromaniac Photographer, a piece from the series “Wonder Beirut” (1997–2006), centred on an archive of images supposedly collected by the fictional Lebanese photographer Abdallah Farah. This use of fictional characters places the duo in a tradition of Lebanese artists who use make-believe to tell Lebanese history while reflecting on the irremediable absences which haunt it. In Histoire d’un photographe pyromane, we see photographs of idealized 1960s Beirut, marred by burns that Farah is said to have inflicted according to the sites of bomb attacks. A similar use of photography to melancholically illuminate overlapping temporalities transpires in the series “Les paysages de Khiam” (Landscapes of Khiam, 2006–2007). After a former detention camp in the town of Khiam was destroyed in 2006, photographs were erected at the site, showing its former intact state. For this work, Hadjithomas and Joreige visited Khiam and systematically re-photographed these eerie photographic memorials. In so doing, they emphasized the cycles of destruction and memory, which travel through images.