Korea Art Week 2021 to serve as window of escape through art

A scene from the promotional video for Korea Art Week 2021, featuring actors Yoon Seung-a, left, and Kim Moo-yeol, as the event's honorary ambassadors / Courtesy of Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism

By Park Han-sol

The official logo of Korea Art Week 2021 / Courtesy of Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism

Korea Art Week, the country's largest art event, held with the collaboration of over 300 galleries, museums, biennales and fairs nationwide, will return next week for its seventh edition.

This year's event, run by the culture ministry's Korea Arts Management Service from Oct. 7 to 17, aims to provide a brief window of escape for the public amid the COVID-19 pandemic, through a variety of local art exhibitions and audience participation programs across the country.

Every year, Korea Art Week dedicates a special section to one particular genre. This year's edition will shed light on photography, notably via the exhibition, "Super-fine," at the Ilmin Museum of Art in central Seoul. The nine featured teams of photographers challenge different conventions and limits, typically associated with the genre, through their works: collages, moving images and installations.

Group art tours to galleries and museums, guided by professional curators, remain the most in-demand program of the festival. This year, a total of 17 routes have been mapped out across seven cities: Seoul, Gwangju, Incheon, Cheongju, Daegu, Busan and Seogwipo on Jeju Island.

Some exhibitions will be available online. Virtual reality tours of 17 different art institutions, filmed with 360-degree view cameras and including high-resolution images of the works, can be accessed via the event's official homepage. To target Millennial and Generation Z audience members, the festival will invite K-pop group Monsta X's Minhyuk as well as virtual docent, Arti in Metaverse, to introduce some of its main programs.

As the 11-day festival coincides with a number of biennales and fairs taking place nationwide, Korea Art Week will also offer ticket discounts and related art programs for other events, including the Korea International Art Fair Seoul, the Daegu Photo Biennale, the Gwangju Design Biennale and the Cheongju Craft Biennale.

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