1945–2009 Online Platform for Korean Modern and Contemporary Art

What Can a Biennial Become Here and Now? Two Curatorial Experiments: MAN + SPACE (2000) and P_A_U_S_E_止 (2002)

The Gwangju Biennale articulated its position on the discourse of globalization that dominated the 1990s through its exhibitions which showcased a large number of multinational and multimedia works in the First edition (1995) and adopted a deconstructive approach in the Second edition (1997). However, in the lead-up to the Third edition in 1999, the Biennale faced significant internal turmoil. With the adoption of a new general director system, Choi Min was appointed, but escalating conflicts between him and the foundation led to his dismissal partway through the process. Korean artists, meanwhile, engaged in collective action, demanding that their production budgets be increased to the level provided to international artists. The event was subsequently postponed to the year 2000 to coincide with the new millennium, which placed the Gwangju Biennale under a dual mandate: to offer a forward-looking perspective attuned to the beginning of a new century, while simultaneously strengthening the own characteristics of the city. A newsletter published by the foundation in 1999 discussed both the curatorial framework for the upcoming exhibition and the latest developments in international biennales.1 It included substantial reviews of the ongoing Venice Biennale and the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, along with previews of the biennales scheduled for 2000 in Lyon, Havana, and Sydney. This suggests that the Gwangju Biennale prepared for the exhibition with a heightened awareness of its role and position within the global art world. Man + Space (2000): Seeking an ‘Asian’ Perspective and Direction Oh Kwang-su, who had previously served as the Asia region commissioner for the inaugural edition, was newly appointed as the artistic director of the Third Gwangju Biennale. Recognizing the year 2000 as a historical turning point, he proposed the human as an overarching theme, aiming to examine the conditions and circumstances that shape human existence in the contemporary era.2 Since this was the first edition to implement the artistic director system, the regional commissioner structure used in the First and Second Biennales was retained. The appointed commissioners were René Block (Europe/Africa), Thomas Finkelpearl (North America), Kim Yu Yeon (Central and South America), Arata Tani (Asia), and Kim Hong-hee (Korea/Oceania), each interpreting the theme in relation to their respective regions. René Block organized his section using the Middle East, regarded as the cradle of human civilization, as a conceptual bridge linking Africa with Western and Northern Europe. His selected artists included Shirin Neshat, William Kentridge, and Eija-Liisa Ahtila. Kim Hong-hee commissioned new works from artists engaged with issues of the body, gender, and identity, highlighting the potential of art to function as a public sphere for social discourse. For example, Byron Kim’s Mute (All the Korean I Know) exposed the linguistic constraints encountered in the process of exploring identity, while Kim Ho-suk’s ink painting The Procession of History represented South Korea’s democratization movement as a historical narrative. The Third Gwangju Biennale was held from March 29 to June 7 in 2000. Among the five exhibition halls, four were dedicated to Asian artists, foregrounding Asia’s presence. In fact, twenty out of the ninety participating artists were from Asia, and it was equal to the number of those from Europe and Africa, which together constituted the largest regional representation. Among the ninety artists from thirty-seven countries, more than sixty percent were in their thirties to forties, marking a noticeable generational shift compared to the First and Second editions, and more than half of the artworks consisted of video and installation pieces.3 Shirin Neshat’s video installation Untitled (Rapture Series) received the Biennale Prize, drawing particular attention to cultural oppression towards Asian women by Islamic society. The exhibition attracted a total of 610,000 visitors. Critical responses to the biennial were mixed. JoongAng Ilbo reported that Le Monde found it peculiar that Europe and Africa were grouped into a single region, while Korea was separated from Asia and paired instead with Oceania.4 On the other hand, art critic Choi Byung-sik defended the biennial’s position to maintain a pan-Asian perspective and to pursue an autonomous direction amid intense competition within the global biennial circuits.5 In fact, the Third Gwangju Biennale’s attempt to explore a distinctly Asian perspective for the first time since its founding became a significant indicator in shaping the subsequent direction of the Gwangju Biennale. P_A_U_S_E_止(2002): The Radical Experiments of ‘Alternative Art Groups’ Immediately after the completion of the Third Gwangju Biennale in 2000, the Gwangju Biennale Foundation drafted a “Long-term Development Plan for the Gwangju Biennale” 6 and undertook a comprehensive organizational restructuring. To move beyond the hierarchical system of director–general director–commissioner used in earlier editions, the Foundation consolidated the curatorial leadership under a single artistic director and introduced a co-curator system. In March 2001, Sung Wan-kyung was appointed as the artistic director of the Fourth Gwangju Biennale. Sung, both an artist and critic, led the Minjung Art collective Reality and Utterance and served as the Latin American commissioner for the First and Second Gwangju Biennale, giving him broad experience across cultural fields both in Korea and abroad. He proposed ‘pause’ as the exhibition theme in response to the rapidly changing contemporary society, expressing his intention to embrace “Gwangju’s peripheral position” as a defining characteristic of the Biennale and to foreground its regional identity through direct engagement with local citizens.7 To expand this vision, the Foundation hosted the international symposium Pause: Reflections on Globalism and Contemporary Art on May 26 of that year, where Sung further developed the concept with the support of Young Soon Min, Charles Esche, and Hou Hanru, who were subsequently appointed as curators. Architect Chung Guyon later joined the team, completing a five-member curatorial structure consisting of one artistic director and four co-curators. At a preliminary press conference held on October 30 of the same year, Sung Wan-kyung, Charles Esche, and Hou Hanru announced plans to invite a substantial number of alternative art groups, including alternative spaces and artist collectives. They explained that the participating groups would lead the spatial design themselves and independently organize the activities within those spaces. Audiences were therefore encouraged to visit these alternative spaces realized within the Biennale and to visually experience the dynamics of globalization through them. The curators also emphasized that the institutional conventions of biennials were questioned internationally, expressing their intention to use the Gwangju Biennale as a critical laboratory.8 They argued that previous editions had largely replicated the 19th-century Venice Biennale model, while affirming their ambition to revitalize the Gwangju Biennale through this exhibition.9 The Fourth Gwangju Biennale, P_A_U_S_E_止 was held from March 29 to June 29, 2002, with a total of three hundred and twenty-eight participants from thirty one countries. Project 1: Pause, co-curated by Charles Esche and Hou Hanru, was the largest section of the exhibition, featuring two hundred and thirty three artists affiliated with twenty six alternative spaces and collectives across Asia and Europe.10 Project 2: Over There, the Land of Diaspora, curated by Young Soon Min, presented works by twenty four diasporic Korean artists based in Los Angeles, São Paulo, Almaty, Yanbian, and Osaka, exploring the different ways in which they construct and negotiate their identities. Project 3: Suspended Sentence, directed by Sung Wan-kyung, was the first Gwangju Biennale project to extend beyond the Biennale Hall and into the historical sites of the May 18 Democratization Movement, including the former military court and detention cells at the 5·18 Liberty Park. Forty-nine Korean artists engaged these spaces laden with political memory, presenting socially and politically charged works. In Project 4: Connection, Chung Guyon worked with twenty two architects and artists from Korea and abroad to transform an abandoned railway site in downtown Gwangju into an art park incorporating landscape design, architecture, and public art. Due to the unprecedented number of participating artists, the expansion into off-site venues, and the establishment of alternative exhibition spaces, the exhibition budget reached 7.3 billion KRW, comparable to that of the inaugural biennale (7.7 billion KRW) and nearly double the budgets of the Second (4.3 billion KRW) and Third (3.9 billion KRW) editions. Meanwhile, the exhibition placed substantial emphasis on interactions between artists and local residents in Gwangju. In particular, Project 1: Pause envisioned four of the five Biennale halls as an ‘urban village’, installing pavilions as communal resting and meeting points between the diverse display areas of alternative spaces and collectives ─ spaces deliberately designed to foster connection rather than separation. An account by a Gwangju resident, Ko Mi-sun, illustrates this well: “I didn’t realize Eko Prawoto’s Bamboo Project was an artwork. I just climbed up and played there with my children. Once I heard the docent’s explanation, I was surprised to learn that it was made by an Indonesian artist. I think the work was intended to give viewers a place to pause and rest. I am not trained in art, but it reminded me of a pavilion on a hillside in my hometown, which made it feel familiar and comfortable.”11 Artist Choi Jinwook of Forum A also offered a humorous reflection: “Sitting on a Taeguk-patterned cushion in the pavilion built by Protoacademy, or inside the tent created by AES Group and more than anything, wandering through the maze-like marketplace formed by twenty-six alternative spaces gathered from around the world. I felt, for the first time, the breath of people across the globe. [...] There is little pretentious or overly difficult art here, and not much that needs theatrical lighting to make sense of. If one were to exaggerate, it would end up like the Forum A booth, where practice and process are privileged over a finished object.”12 The exhibition structure of the Fourth Gwangju Biennale was widely praised by international media for dismantling conventional spatial arrangements and enabling audiences to experience the raw, unfiltered energy generated by alternative spaces and artist collectives. Michel Nuridsany of Le Figaro remarked that “it is the first time that a biennale as significant as Gwangju has boldly attempted to illuminate alternative groups, which have become a central phenomenon for understanding today’s internationalized art world.”13 Bijutsu Techo, citing critic Ushiroshoji Masahiro, also offered a positive assessment, highlighting that “the Biennale’s clear emphasis on communication and collaboration among artists feels refreshing,” and praising it for fostering community-based cultural practices and inter-regional networks.14 However, the Biennale also encountered serious challenges. With a large number of artists residing in Gwangju and simultaneously constructing their exhibition spaces and artworks, the Foundation confronted what it later described as a disaster ─ a sharp rise in artist accommodation and production costs, delays in construction, and mounting logistical strain. Many visitors at the opening ceremony were surprised to find sections of the Biennale still “under construction,” prompting criticism of the Foundation’s inability to maintain central coordination. Yet Cho Inho, who served as publicity team director in 2002 and later exhibition director and planning director until 2018, emphasized that Sung Wan-kyung’s administration also achieved meaningful institutional progress. Confronted with budget constraints and declining visitor numbers, the leadership dismantled the long-standing separation between main and special exhibitions and eliminated large-scale ancillary programs, thus establishing a more sustainable operational model. Art in America, reflecting on these tensions, cited Hou Hanru’s description of the Biennale as a strategy of “Fuck the museum” ─ an approach that pushed institutional critique to its extreme limits. The review praised the exhibition for provoking heated debate and generating new insights by intentionally burdening and destabilizing conventional museum structures. What Can the Biennale Become Here and Now? The Fourth Gwangju Biennale recorded a total of 550,000 visitors, and UNESCO’s Arts and Culture Division awarded the UNESCO Prize jointly to the participating artists ruangrupa, Kim Sejin, and Surasi Kusolwong. Among them, ruangrupa’s Nothing is Wrong attracted particular attention. The day before the opening, the collective prepared a large dining table laden with food, shared a meal with participants, and then left the remnants to decay over the duration of the exhibition. At the time, ruangrupa was a newly formed collective based in Jakarta (founded in 2000), and this award became a major driving force for the group’s subsequent international collaborations and socially engaged practices. Rooted in Indonesia’s historical circumstances including Dutch and Japanese colonial occupation and the lack of a stable artistic infrastructure during authoritarian rule, their practice has evolved into socially driven modes of art-making embedded within global networks. ruangrupa often compares art to cooking: institutions function as the recipe, collaborators as the ingredients, and the work itself becomes a shared meal. Their approach may also be described as a form of “hacking” — infiltrating institutional systems to reconfigure them, while addressing issues such as equitable distribution of knowledge and the mitigation of educational disparity in the Asian context.17 Yet one might ask whether, in Korea, the relatively late establishment of the museum system and the introduction of the biennial format created a temporal gap in the development of these concepts. A notable example can be found in the international workshop Community and Art (March 2–8, 2002), held prior to the opening of the Fourth Gwangju Biennale. During this event, the critical position taken by alternative art groups from Europe differed markedly from those of Korea and Asia. “Participants from Asia viewed globalism as possessing a demonic quality, while the European participants regarded it almost as an angel sent from heaven.”18 This divergence can be understood in relation to contrasting historical and cultural conditions: in Korea and Indonesia, where the legacy of authoritarian rule continued to restrict freedom of expression, globalism was readily interpreted as a dominating force; whereas in Europe where museums had developed over centuries and institutional structures had already been scrutinized through successive waves of globalization, globalism could appear as a platform for exchange rather than control. Artist Cho Jieun, who participated as a member of the Seongnam Project in the spatial composition for Forum A, later reflected that the workshop allowed her to “realize anew that Korea was already entangled in the complex phenomenon of globalization.”19 The workshop eventually evolved into a broader inquiry: How can collectives that have emerged from such different social and institutional conditions work together? This question later developed into the follow-up forum Fixing the Bridge, held in 2004 by the Cemeti Art Foundation in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Although the participants held divergent views on globalization, discussion continued on the basis of a shared concern over the pressures and crises produced by neoliberalism. Already during the 2002 workshop, participants acknowledged that merely adopting the model of an alternative art group could not constitute a solution in itself. As they reflected, “To signal that a particular choice has been made does not mean that the choice itself resolves the problem. How, then, do we confront the contradictions of liberal democracy?”20 Artist Cho Jieun similarly noted, “In the end, it is crucial to continue practicing within one’s own local context.”21 To situate this trajectory within the context of Korean contemporary art, it is necessary to connect it to the culture of alternative spaces that flourished from the late 1990s through the 2000s, as well as to the socially engaged artistic practices that emerged around them. Alternative spaces in Korea played a significant role in shaping the discursive dimension of Korean art, particularly in strengthening its sense of contemporaneity. Seo Dongjin critiqued the tendency of alternative spaces to “avoid interrogating their own ideological efficacy simply by virtue of being entangled in a particular site,” asserting that they must remain responsive to the demand to “contextualize.”22 Likewise, Bae Myungji interpreted the realist, socially relational art of the early 2000s as “a representation of dissensus in response to existing social order,” arguing that such practices should be situated within the framework of “alternative globalization” ─ a resistant force against neoliberal globalism.23 The 2002 Gwangju Biennale’s notion of ‘Pause’ can be understood as an attempt to critically reflect on neoliberal value systems through the framework of alternative art groups, while simultaneously conducting a critical experiment on the biennial institution itself. By elevating Gwangju’s ‘peripheral’ position and the work of collectives as forms of resistance to the homogenization of the global art system, the Biennale articulated politicality not only discursively, but also visually and experientially. This naturally raises the question: How did these developments inform subsequent biennials? ruangrupa returned to Gwangju in 2018 as part of GudSkul, a collective newly formed with fellow Indonesian groups. Members of GudSkul made repeated visits to the city, residing there while operating a temporary ‘school’ for local collectives.24 In contrast to ruangrupa’s earlier participation, GudSkul placed greater emphasis on education as both a methodology and a means of articulating and activating socially engaged artistic practice. The anti-capitalist ethos underlying these activities carried forward into ruangrupa’s direction of Documenta fifteen in Kassel in 2022, where they introduced lumbung ─ a process of collective production and distribution rooted in shared trust and mutual care. This practice has continued to evolve globally even after Kassel, sustained by networks of artists committed to collaboration rather than competition. Contemporary art biennials, which only began to gain prominence in the latter half of the twentieth century, are by nature sites of intense cultural negotiation ─ spaces that produce horizontal forms of discourse rather than simply reproducing fixed theory.25 Maria Hlavajova suggests that the relatively short history of biennials in non-Western contexts may, in fact, grant them greater freedom for self-renewal.26 She further argues that due to the comparatively recent history of biennial exhibitions, these events possess the potential to function as ‘art-historical excerpts’ ─ narrative capsules that articulate and condense the knowledge necessary for writing art history.27 Through the biennial, local residents encounter new possibilities for art within their everyday lives, while also being exposed to diverse ways of living practiced by global citizens. In this sense, the biennale becomes a social space in which new imaginaries can emerge and expand through encounters with transnational communities.28 Does the Gwangju Biennale still occupy a central position in contemporary discourse through its institutional activity and exhibition practice? Before addressing peripheral criticisms or diffuse skepticism surrounding biennales, such a foundational question must be considered first. The unique value of the biennial lies in its capacity to bring in unfixed ways of thinking ─ creating a space where ideas remain alive, circulate, and continue to evolve. As a late entrant to the biennial system, Gwangju must resist the urge to merely follow global art trends ─ an impulse that risks reinforcing elitism on one hand and local self-interest on the other. Grounded in locality yet capable of surpassing it, the biennial should function as a site of practice for mutual learning and solidarity, actively responding to the existential crises facing humanity today.