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 Tales from the Bamboo Spaceship (Part One)
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관리자 2018-08-21 11:59
Tales from the Bamboo Spaceship (Part One), Mixed media, Dimensions variable, 2018, Courtesy of Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou and Carlier/Gebauer, Berlin and the artist
Ming WONG
Tales from the Bamboo Spaceship (Part One)
In the Busan Biennale, Wong elaborates his extant critical interest in futurity and science fiction. The artist has spent recent years researching and reflecting on the history of Cantonese opera’s transition from the stage to the screen, with a particular interest in the history of Sino futurism, Chinese science fiction. Wong’s recent work is an attempt to reconstruct a possible genealogical connection between these two seemingly distinct cultural forms. Given that the artist was born in Singapore, this possibility invokes the relationship between Cantonese culture and language, and the increasingly dominant Chinese state culture dictated by Beijing. Titled Tales From the Bamboo Spaceship (Part 1) (2018), the work that Wong shows in an abandoned office space at the former Bank of Korea building, comprises several pieces of used office furniture, mobilized as display pedestals for images, videos objects and texts, reflecting Wong’s research into this subject. Experienced from a wider angle, the piece’s essence is the relationship between cultural production and our ability to envision a shared, alternate future.