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 Fukushima
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관리자 2018-08-21 10:48
Chernobyl (from the series “Nuclear Accidents”), Acrylic paint and oil stick on canvas, Approx. 200 x 330 cm, 2017, Courtesy of Barry Fellman
Dora LONGO BAHIA
Fukushima (from the series “Nuclear Accidents”)
Chernobyl (from the series “Nuclear Accidents”)
Executed in feverish reds and oranges, these images depict fairgrounds— rollercoasters and ferris wheels—against crepuscular skies. With a cryptic deployment of hand-writing, the artist has sought to complicate these potentially nostalgic images. Within the paintings Fukushima and Chernobyl (both 2017) cursive notations reading “Fukushima” and “Chernobyl” float on the picture plane, invoking a nagging memory of the horrible nuclear disasters forever associated with these places. Disturbingly but somehow beautifully, these works stir violent historical circumstances and pictorialist drama. In turn, Bahia’s use of hand-writing might be understood as an attempt to draw painting into a collaboration with memoirist literature, in much the same way that she has already adjoined it with the fractious energy of rock music.