Busan Biennale examines authority with exhibition at closed school
Former Busan Nam High School / Courtesy of Busan Biennale
This year's Busan Biennale kicks off Saturday for a 65-day run, assembling 46 artists and collectives from over 22 countries around topics that embody the city's long history of resilience and solidarity.
It unfolds at three unique venues across the southeastern city: Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, Space OneZ and the former Busan Nam High School.
Busan Biennale co-artistic director Evelyn Simons / Courtesy of Busan Biennale
For co-artistic director Evelyn Simons, having exhibitions at a former school is a reminder of the central theme, "Dissident Chorus."
"We wanted to play with that atmosphere of being in a context where you come to learn, but also are in such a transformative moment in your life," she said. "These two layers coexist and sometimes conflict with one another: coming of age, learning to get to know yourself, navigating group dynamics, notions of authority, power being exerted onto your body and mind, discipline and expectations."
The tension between how an old high school can evoke memories of childhood and notions of authority is something they wanted to play with.
Busan Biennale co-artistic director Amal Khalaf / Courtesy of Busan Biennale
"What we wanted was for that residue to sit right up against the work, so a visitor isn't just looking at art about pedagogy, they're standing inside their own history of being taught, being disciplined, being formed, and hopefully the works in the site invite them to also think about unlearning," co-artistic director Amal Khalaf said.
A high school, she continued, "holds so much in the body, not just memory but posture, the way you learned to sit still, to wait to be called on, to perform obedience or hide from it."
This tension is played everywhere around the project. "This biennale goes beyond easy digestible statements, transcends images that can be consumed at first glance," Simons said.
While contemporary art exhibitions playing with opposing forces aren't exactly novel premises, this year's biennale is.
Space OneZ, one of the three venues of the Busan Biennale / Courtesy of Busan Biennale
"I think we did feel pressure around — and still do — that you can program dissidence flawlessly and still reproduce extraction in how the show gets made, who gets paid, whose labor disappears into the credits," Khalaf said. "That's the version of softening we have been thinking through and actually worry about, the conditions behind the word on the wall text. So no, we didn't soften dissident. What we tried to do instead was keep asking whether we'd earned the right to use it."
While it’s impossible to ascertain the full reception and impact of a two-month show, this year’s curation showcases the curators’ holistic approach to experimentation with sonic and embodied practices. There’s an abundance of sharp, punchy work to be displayed, with notable highlights including Brahim Tall’s speaker installation, which grows louder as more people enter the space; Lara Ögel and Guely Morató Loredo’s collaborative piece, created around the atmosphere of rituals; Park Hyun-sung’s work, unfolding through tensions between fabric, metal and theatrical sensibility; Natasha Tontey’s special work for the biennale, which questions, among other things, patriarchal control and its haunting of memory; and Éric Baudelaire’s installation, reflecting on the plurality of the senses.
“There will be many names on the wall labels; this isn’t a biennale of objects, but a biennale of people and relationships. Many works came into being through collaborations with fellow artists, researchers, musicians, filmmakers — and in co-production with other institutions and organizations worldwide,” Simons said.
“Yeongdo itself, and the two venues located there, Space OneZ and Busan Nam High School, shaped the works that were developed for it and also how we started to think about Dissident Chorus as a framework too: ideas of collective learning, ghosts, repetition and a concrete way to think through imagining futures,” Khalaf added.
Busan Museum of Contemporary Art / Courtesy of Busan Biennale
Another highlight comes from Minouk Lim’s piece, which shows a ferry moving along the Yeongdo coast before ending in a rave, with a soundtrack that draws on recordings connected to labor activist Kim Jin-suk’s 309-day crane protest in 2011. Throughout the exhibition period, Busan Biennale will present a range of performances, concerts, workshops and other programs centered on experiencing live art together.
The biennale runs until Nov. 1. Visit busanbiennale2026.com for more information.
Daniela P. Solano, @ldymacca on Instagram, is a cultural researcher and the founder of Korean Wave Lab, a platform dedicated to promoting Korean underground subcultures.