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.
2022 Kang Tae Hun
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관리자 2022-12-16 15:56
Where Are They Going, 2022, Seven-channel video, projection mapping, stainless steel, polycarbonate, PVC film, 420×690×350cm, 19min. 10sec.
Born and raised in Busan, Kang Tae Hun uses shipping containers to highlight how the city of Busan joined the capitalist world order as these metallic cargo holders traversed across globe, connecting one city to another. Kang also unveils the lives of the marginalized who were pushed aside in the process.
Projected on a structure shaped like a shipping container, Kang’s work begins with images of explosions from the wars that plagued the world long since the past. Kang then goes on to capture the history of Busan, the transformation of the city’s industries and architecture, incidents and people, and the bodies of migrant workers. Meanwhile, the locations, events, and subjects that Kang personally experienced are overlaid across different locations and points in time. The mutually intrusive and resonating images stacked atop the container capture the history of cities and humanity much like a map inked on parchment. Originating in World War II, shipping containers became a staple in Busan during the Korean War as the city was transformed into a modern hub of logistics. Evolving throughout the Japanese occupation, Korean War, Cold War, and the near-completion of pan-global capitalism today, Busan has proven to be a valuable city geopolitically at first, but now also geoeconomically as it functions as one of the key logistics hubs in the global trade network. Freedom is now something enjoyed not by people, but commodities.
Despite the increasing dematerialization and digitalization of this world, shipping containers continue to roam the seas across the globe. By using these containers that enter Busan Harbor to brutishly roam the roads across the country, Kang’s work pens out a map of modern imperialism fraught with organized violence. In a world where capital, commodities, and network geography define the international space, Kang suggests a new negotiation be reached for the sustainment and betterment of humanity.
b. 1975, Busan, South Korea
Lives in Busan
In his artistic work, Kang Tae Hun critiques the political and social ideologies and distorted subjectivity that originate in the structural contradictions of the global capitalist system, while exploring new worlds and subjectivities. Working in a wide range of genres including bricolage, installation art, video, and media, he continues to pursue his aesthetic experiments. His solo exhibition A faucet in my mind (Space Bandee, Busan, 2006) interpreted authoritarian systems through the lens of personal experience. Other solo exhibitions since then have included Implicit premises (OpenSpace Bae, Busan, 2019) and Of certain belief (Amado Art Space, 2016), and he has also taken part in events such as the Busan Biennale 2010 and 7th Gwangju Biennale (2008).