Gwangju Biennale becomes watery feast for eyes and ears

Taking cues from Korean woodcut techqniues and their critical role in documenting democratic movements of the past, Malaysian collective Pangrok Sulap reinterprets similar images depicting collective resistance with fabric at the 14th edition of the Gwangju Biennale. The biennale, which consists of the central exhibition curated by artistic director Lee Sook-kyung and the national pavilion section, runs through July 9 in Korea's southwestern city. Yonhap

By Park Han-sol

GWANGJU ― Fluid and pliable, water yields to whatever change comes its way, ready to take on any form at all times. Its ability to embrace even seemingly impossible contradictions is what ultimately makes it an irresistible force of change.

Perhaps it was only natural for this year's Gwangju Biennale, inspired by the chapter of a classical Chinese Daoist text that speaks of the transformative and embracive power of water, to be greeted by pouring rain during its opening ceremony held in Korea's southwestern city last week.

Helmed by artistic director Lee Sook-kyung, senior curator of international art at London's Tate Modern, the 14th edition of Asia's longest-running survey of contemporary art uses "soft and weak" water as a glue to invite 79 artists who each strive to offer alternative views of history, breathe life into near-forgotten traditions or envision the future of humanity's relationship with nature.

The result is a tightly organized show that becomes a watery feast for both the eyes and ears.

Alan Michelson's "Midden" (2021) / Newsis

At "Soft and Weak like Water," water, both real and digital, flows everywhere ― the main Gwangju Biennale Exhibition Hall, Gwangju National Museum, Mugak Temple, Horanggasy Artpolygon and Artspace House.

Buhlebezwe Siwani's multimedia piece, unfurled at the exhibition hall as an overture of the biennale, is born from her practice as a "sangoma," or a spiritual healer in South Africa. Her three-channel video installation, "The Spirits Descend," surrounded by aromatic soil and vine-like wool ropes that take cues from the belts worn by Zion church members, is submerged in a clear pool of water, adding a poetic layer of blurriness to the filmed bodily performance.

In "Midden," Alan Michelson projects footage taken from two waterways in New York ― the landscape that used to house ancient shell mounds left by Indigenous people ― onto a pile of oyster shells sourced from the Korean city of Tongyeong in South Gyeongsang Province.

Such retrieval of muted histories through water continues in Taiki Sakpisit's "The Spirit Level," where the filmmaker zooms in on the Mekong River that is layered with decades of brutal political history and trauma of Thailand.

Aliza Nisenbaum's "Shin-myeong, ‘Someday in Spring,' Dress Rehearsal" (2022) / Courtesy of the artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York

For a select group of creators, remaining in direct dialogue with the artistic tradition and spirit of Gwangju, the city that witnessed the 1980 pro-democracy uprising against the military dictatorship, forms a key part of their pieces on view.

Taking inspiration from Korean woodcut printing techniques and their critical role in documenting past democratic movements, the Malaysian collective Pangrok Sulap reinterprets similar images depicting collective resistance with fabrics from the present.

Aliza Nisenbaum paints portraits of performers from the city's theater group, Shin-myeong. The bright pop-art-like colors and patterns are ironically employed on canvas to portray the understated tragedy of the group's performance, "Someday in Spring," staged in remembrance of those who lost their lives during the uprising.

But artistic director Lee highlighted that "Soft and Weak like Water" is not seeking to narrow its focus only to art that has a direct connection with the host city's history.

"Rather, the spirit of Gwangju serves more as a starting point for us to invite stories of injustice, oppression and resistance that have emerged all around the world," she said during last week's press conference. "When these similar tales are brought together in one place, a sense of solidarity and hope can be formed."

As a result, distinct stories of marginalization materialize in every corner of the exhibition venues ― Kim Soun-gui's stirring "Poems," where female high school students recite poems by underrepresented female writers of the 1392-1910 Joseon Kingdom; Christine Sun Kim's "Every Life Signs," which conveys the subtle nuances of American Sign Language; Mayunkiki's "Sikuma," where the artist draws on her identity as a creator of Ainu descent, an Indigenous population of Japan; and Guadalupe Maravilla's "Disease Throwers," which generates therapeutic sound to bring to light how the systemic abuse of undocumented immigrants physically manifests in their displaced bodies.

Meiro Koizumi's "Theater of Life" (2023) / Newsis

Only after recognizing the tales of the marginalized can humans strive together to envision a future marked by solidarity and coexistence with all beings on Earth ― however bizarre they are.

One of those uncanny visions unfolds in the basement of Horanggasy Artpolygon, awash with black light. Occupying the surreal, mirrored rooms are Anne Duk Hee Jordan's strange robotic sculptures: a moving eye, a crawling brain, an octopus garden and a barnacle reduced to its phallic-shaped form, among others. Seeing their mirrored reflections overlap with creatures on display, viewers are encouraged to imagine a future where human and non-human techno-agents mingle seamlessly.

The entanglement of the living and non-living is also explored in the sculptural work of Sopheap Pich. He adorns the outdoor garden of the Gwangju National Museum with his shimmering trees made out of hammered panels of recycled aluminum. From afar, they look surprisingly lifelike, even while standing next to their living counterparts.

Anne Duk Hee Jordan's "Octopus Garden" (2023) / Courtesy of the artist and Gwangju Biennale Foundation

Sopheap Pich's "La Danse" (2022) / Korea Times photo by Park Han-sol

With "Soft and Weak like Water," Lee suggests how art can come together to produce transnational ― or even planetary ― communities that intimately share the spirit of resistance as well as visions about a sustainable future.

Such a message reverberated more strongly than ever throughout the rain-soaked city of Gwangju in the first week of April.

Biennale's new award, expanded national pavilion section

This year's Gwangju Biennale is not masking its ambitions to raise its profile in the international art scene, adding several noteworthy changes to its run that arguably take cues from its much older and larger counterpart in Venice.

The biennale announced the launch of the Park Seo-bo Art Prize ― dubbed the Golden Dove, reminiscent of the Venice Biennale's Golden Lion ― with a goal to recognize one artist whose work reflects the show's founding spirit and values through 2042.

The inaugural $100,000 award, funded by the eponymous "dansaekhwa" (monochrome painting) master and his GIZI Foundation, went to Korean artist Oum Jeong-soon for her "Elephant without Trunk."

Oum Jeong-soon's "Elephant without Trunk" (2023) / Courtesy of the artist and Gwangju Biennale Foundation

Oum's life-size fabric sculptures of trunkless elephants, which visitors can touch with their hands, are part of her decades-long project that focuses on reinterpreting the animal through her extensive collaboration with the visually impaired. It's a way of representing "another way of seeing" and bringing to the fore the existences that have been rendered invisible in the realm of normality.

In addition to the establishment of the new prize, the Gwangju Biennale has bulked up its national pavilion section, which consists of shows curated independently by respective countries and presented alongside the central exhibition ― much like its Venice counterpart.

The biennale introduced the section in 2018, featuring three countries that year, and just two in 2021. This year, it is joined by nine, the largest number yet.

Ukraine, Italy, Canada, Israel, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Poland and China have staged exhibitions across the city that delve into issues from climate action and cultural legacy to marginalized voices.

The expositions put forth by each country seem to vary widely in terms of the freshness of their presentations.

Quvianaqtuk Pudlat's "Untitled" (2022) / Courtesy of the artist

Unfolding at Leekangha Art Museum is the Canadian Pavilion's "Once a Myth, Becoming Real." Curated by William Huffman, director of the West Baffin Cooperative, an Inuit cooperative based in Kinngait, Nunavut, it is the first and the largest show ever held in Asia that spotlights the oeuvre of practicing Indigenous artists in northern Canada.

Thirty-two Inuk creators of different generations ― including Shuvinai Ashoona, who earned a special mention at the last year's Venice Biennale, and Kenojuak Ashevak, who was an icon of modern Inuit art for her owl prints featured on Canadian postage stamps ― are introduced through over 90 colored pencil and ink drawings and stone sculptures, most of which were produced for this occasion.

The images on view offer an intriguing glimpse into Inuit mythology, Arctic fauna and contemporary lifestyles of the Indigenous community.

The Italian Pavilion's "What does water dream, when it sleeps?" curated by Valentina Buzzi at Donggok Museum of Art is another highlight.

Marco Barotti's "CLAMS" uses water quality data gathered from the nearby Yeongsan River to activate the lifelike movements of bivalve-shaped kinetic sound sculptures. Fabio Roncato presents nine plaster "onggi" vases organically shaped by the flow of Gwangju's rivers in "Follow Me" as an homage to the city's 1980 pro-democracy movement that lasted nine days.

Perhaps the most eye-grabbing part of the show was Agnes Questionmark's site-specific performance, "Drowned in living waters," where the artist immersed herself inside an aquarium to represent, quite literally, the relationship between the human body and water as a place of genesis and transformation.

Agnes Questionmark's "Drowned in living waters" (2023) / Korea Times photo by Park Han-sol

On the other hand, exhibitions organized by the pavilions of France ("Dreams Have No Titles" at Yangrim Gallery), Switzerland ("Spaceless" at Leeleenam Studio) and the Netherlands ("Extinction Wars" at the Gwangju Museum of Art), were, while notable on their own, essentially reiterations of what was already showcased in Venice or Seoul in the past year.

"Dreams Have No Titles" highlights Zineb Sedira's gripping film of the same name, which earned the Algerian-born artist a special mention at last year's Venice Biennale for exploring the postcolonial narratives of Algeria and France through the medium of cinema ― but without the immersive installations and live performance that transformed the French Pavilion in Venice into a period film set.

A scene from Zineb Sedira's "Dreams Have No Titles" (2022) / Courtesy of the artist and Mennour, Paris

"Spaceless," which brings together the works of eight emerging photographers from Switzerland and Korea with a focus on the ever-shifting urban and digital landscapes and their influences on human perception, was first put on display last fall at the Swiss Embassy in Seoul.

And "Extinction Wars" expands the visuals of "The Law on Trial," an exhibition previously mounted at Seoul's Oil Tank Culture Park. Through oil barrel towers, images of extinct creatures and videos of public hearings, it brings to the fore the timely project, Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (CICC), co-founded by lawyer and activist Radha D'Souza and artist Jonas Staal, to prosecute climate crimes committed by states and transnational corporations and suggests alternative legal frameworks.

Installation view of the Dutch Pavilion's "Extinction Wars" / Korea Times photo by Park Han-sol

"The biennale is aiming to host 20 national pavilions for its 15th edition, which is on tap for September 2024," said Park Yang-woo, president of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation. Such an effort to scale up the pavilion section is one indication of where the art event hopes to head in its future iterations. (Venice hosted 80 last year.)

Time will tell whether these new systemic changes prove to be an effective addition to the event's mission to serve as Asia's statement of what contemporary art can do and say.

The Gwangju Biennale, which opened on April 7, will be held until July 9, making this the longest run in the event's history since its launch in 1995.

Edgar Calel's "The Echo of an Ancient Form of Knowledge" (2023) / Courtesy of the artist and Gwangju Biennale Foundation