There’s an equation that’s become familiar to the Korean art community: even-numbered year =biennial year. Every even-numbered autumn sees the curtain rise on the country’s three premier contemporary art biennials. And when it does, arts professionals from Korea and all over the world set off on a journey to visit the events, held one after the other in Gwangiu, Busan, and Seoul.

There’s an equation that’s become familiar to the Korean art community: even-numbered year = biennial year. Every even-numbered autumn sees the curtain rise on the country’s three premier contemporary art biennials. And when it does, arts professionals from Korea and all over the world set off on a journey to visit the events, held one after the other in Gwangju, Busan, and Seoul. For the opening proceedings in particular, reporters come from arts journals and media at home and overseas, together with attendees from art museums and galleries. The different arts spaces, for their part, work busily to ready their own exhibitions, hoping to profit from some biennial synergy. Because they target visitors from overseas, exhibitions are usually large-scale showings of new work by some of the country’s top artists. In short, biennial season is a heated affair, with seemingly everyone in the Korean arts trying to bring their richest content to the party. The city of Gwangju has tried to get in on the arts market action by creating the Art Gwangju fair in time for the 2010 biennial season. Unfortunately, its efforts haven’t been seen as very successful. Korea is still a country without a very broad market for art, and the win-win marketing stage for biennials -- where artists with work shown at the Venice Biennale, say, can be seen at Art Basel -- looks a long way off.

The “biennial season” phenomenon in Korea reached high gear at the dawn of the 2000s. The country’s first event, the Gwangju Biennale, was launched in 1995; the years since have seen the institution of Mediacity Seoul (the Seoul International Media Biennale) in 2000, then the 2002 relaunching of the Busan Youth Biennale as the Busan Biennale. Together, the three of them have become Korea’s top international events in the contemporary arts. At one point, a “biennial fever” began sweeping the nation, with one region after the other starting up its own event.

The Gwangju, Busan, and Seoul Biennials and APAP

In Korea, the city of Gwangju is known by the nickname Yehyang, meaning “hometown of art.” The name comes from a longstanding tradition of landscape art and literati painting, but in recent years it's seemed especially fitting for one main reason: the Gwangju Biennale. Last May brought word that the event was selected as one of the world’s top five biennials on a Top 20 list compiled by the online art market service provider artnet. Inspirational news, certainly, for the organizers as they prepared for the tenth event in 2014. The Gwangju Biennale started in 1995 with 92 artists from 50 countries exhibiting work on the theme “Beyond the Borders.” General directors since then have included Oh Kwang-su (for the third event), Sung Wan-kyung (fourth), Lee Young-woo (fifth), and Kim Hong-hee (sixth). But it was the seventh event in 2008, with the first-ever overseas curator serving as general director, that the real push for international recognition began. Massimiliano Gioni (general director in 2010) and Okwui Enwezor (2008), in particular, produced some Gwangju Biennale synergy with their efforts as Venice Biennale general directors for 2013 and 2015. There was also a new spin in format in 2012, with a team of six Asian women curators (including Kim Sun-jung from Korea) working together on planning. This year’s event, organized by general director Jessica Morgan (curator at Tate Modern) under the theme “Burning Down the House,” invites 106 artists from 35 countries.

The Gwangju Design Biennale takes place in odd-numbered years, when the Gwangju Biennale isn’t being staged. (It’s a similar format to Venice, where biennials alternate between contemporary art and architecture.) It was launched in 2005 to help promote Gwangju’s rise as a global contemporary art and design center after the success of the Gwangju Biennale event. General directors have come mainly from the design world: Lee Soon-jong for the first event, Lee Soon-in for the second, Eun Byung-soo for the third, Lee Young-hye for the fifth. The exception was the fourth event, where exhibitions were organized by architect Seung H-Sang and contemporary artist Ai Weiwei, in a reflection of the era’s trend toward genre convergence in art. Both the Gwangju Biennale and the Gwangju Design Biennale take place in the city’s exclusive Biennale Hall; for the former event, exhibitions are also held in spaces around the city, including markets, temples, and the nearby Gwangju Museum of Art.

Gwangju Biennale, 2014 ‘Burning Down the House’ ⓒ Gwangju Biennale Foundation

Gwangju Design Biennale, 2013 Exhibition View ⓒ Gwangju Biennale Foundation

While it may have conceded the “first in Korea” title to Gwangju, the Busan Biennale actually has origins dating back far earlier. The Pusan Youth Biennale, held seven times between 1981 and 1994, would go on to become the Pusan International Art Festival (PICAF) in 1998 before its 2001 retitling as the Busan Biennale, which held its first event the next year. Every event has had the Busan Museum of Art as its chief venue, and the organizers have tried to make the most of the port city setting by planning and staging installations that incorporate beaches and unused urban spaces, including separate events like the Sea Art Festival and the Busan Sculpture Project. Korean curators directed the first four exhibitions (Kim Ai-ryung in 2002, Choi Tae-man in 2004, Park Ma-nu in 2006, and Kim Won-bang in 2008), while the fifth event in 2010 was directed by Japan’s Azumaya Takashi, and the sixth in 2012 by 2007 Kassel documenta general director Roger M. Buergel. The 2014 event, directed by France’s Olivier Kaeppelin on the theme “Inhabiting the World”, has been in the news lately because of frictions between the Busan arts community and the organizing committee over his selection.

SeMA Biennale Mediacity Seoul is a media art biennial sponsored by the city of Seoul and organized by the Seoul Museum of Art(SeMA). It was first developed as a way of focusing more on specific genres amid a general wave of attention to new media art that surfaced around 2000. The first event that year was titled “Media City”; since then, its focus has been on sharing diverse works of contemporary media art based in interchange and consilience between science, the humanities, and technology. Past directors have included Yoo Jin-sang (2012), Kim Sun-jung (2010), Park Il-ho (2008), Rhee Won-il (2006 and 2002), Yoon Jin-sup (2004), and Song Mi-sook (2000), with over 1,000 artists from around the world taking part over the past 12 years. Since the event is organized by the Seoul Museum of Art, that building had also played host each time. This year’s event, on the theme of “Ghost, Spies, and Grandmothers”, has artist, director, and planner Park Chan-kyung serving as general director. Since last year, there has also been a series of “ Pre-Biennale” events, which have included talks by the renowned scholar Alain Badiou, artist/theorist matching workshops, and various exhibitions.

L) Official Busan biennale logo
R) Official logo for 2014 SeMA Biennale Mediacity Seoul

Public art projects have been enjoying a boom in Korea in recent years, part of an effort by national and local governments to boost the aesthetic quality of Korea’s cities and rebuild their image after years of rampant development. The Anyang Public Art Project (APAP) was the first biennial event adopted along these lines. Launched in 2005, APAP has been held every three years since the second event in 2007. With Lee Young-chul serving as general director, the inaugural 2005 APAP featured contemporary artists setting up art installations in Anyang Amusement Park and other less developed parts of the city center. In 2007, the artistic directors were Kim Sung-won, Kim Seung-duk, and Franck Gautherot, with world-renowned artists and architecture transforming sites all around the city with art structures like Daniel Buren’s Passages under a Colored Sky and Liam Gillick’s Full Scale Model of a Social Structure for a Plaza, or the Dutch architectural group MVRDV’s Anyang Peak. In total, some 92 works of art were put up around the city for the two events.

The event would eventually undergo its own change in format in 2010, as artists began abandoning the limited strictures of an art object focus in favor of “relational public art,” which emphasized resident participation and the process. Programs were designed for citizens, local groups, and institutions to be an active part of their own environment, working under the three subthemes of “New Community,” “Open City,” and “Nomadic.” The artistic director at the time was Park Kyung, a professor of visual arts at the University of California, San Diego. The 2014 event looked back at APAP’s fast-paced history since 2005, with Beck Jee-sook serving as artistic director. It was an occasion for singling out key episodes for new appraisal -- moments of intersection between civil society and Korean history, public and contemporary art, contemporary art and the public.

Anyang Public Art Project (APAP), 2010 Open School ⓒ APAP

Local Government Biennials : An Emphasis on Genre

One of the most notable things about Korea is the number of biennial events staged in its different cities to highlight specific genres: pottery, crafts, photography, and more. There's been a proliferation of various genre-centered biennials by the different local governments -- part of a strategy for setting their cities apart with cultural content. Of course, critics have consistently sniped about the “Korean biennial boom” as the same local governments indiscriminately flooding the market with cultural events. The emphasis on genre has been seen as more cultural strategy than anything else, focusing too much on achieving "distinction" from other biennials. Still, at a time when the trend in art is one where the boundaries of media and genre are increasingly meaningless, these efforts should rightly be seen as important attempts to achieve diversity and broaden the base, not just for contemporary art, but for genres like photography, crafts, and pottery. And because they approach important genristic links between Korean tradition and modernity in biennial format -- things like craftwork and pottery -- it behooves them to continue seeking out the kind of painstaking design prowess and vision that will help turn them into important cultural content for the country. The following section looks at the genre-based biennials that have emerged over the years.

The Cheongju International Craft Biennale began relatively early on in 1999, with the aim of broadening the base for crafts, which were then seen as a neglected area compared to other artistic genres. It was designed to pay closer attention to a field that has continued expanding its boundaries within modern visual culture, looking at it within a scope that now extended to art objects, design, architecture, and the surrounding environment. What set this event apart was the decision to organize separate exhibitions -- Guest Country Pavilions, International Industry Pavilions -- as a way of drawing distinctions from other biennials and exploring possibilities unique to the craft genre. Since 2007, the Guest Country Pavilions have focused on introducing the unique craft arts of specific nations: Italy in 2007, Canada in 2009, Finland in 2011, and Germany in 2013. The International Industry Pavilions offer an experimental showcase for crafts and design by sharing and marketing the craft trends of different countries. The year 2011 marked another step forward with the decision to repurpose the old Cheongju Tobacco Processing Plant -- a cradle of modern Korean industry that had faded into the mists of history -- as an exclusive exhibition venue.

Most Koreans asked to identify a particular item with the city of Icheon in Gyeonggi Province would probably single out its pottery. Its various pottery villages have earned it a name as a leading center in pottery culture, so it’s no wonder that a pottery biennial would have started there. The World Ceramic Biennale Korea is an event held simultaneously in three different Gyeonggi cities known for their pottery: Icheon, Gwangju, and Yeoju. It boasts a world of contemporary ceramic art, with artists participating from over 60 countries at each event since its 2001 launch. One particular draw is the multitude of workshops for visitors -- a way of taking full advantage of the different interactive possibilities of ceramics.

First held in 2006, the Daegu Photo Biennale marks its fifth event this year. It’s an opportunity to showcase contemporary global trends in photography and share Korea’s photographic arts with the rest of the world, and it’s seen major growth over the years, going from 60 artists from 10 countries at the first event to 346 artists from over 20 countries in 2012. Its hallmark is the way it takes advantage of the popular appeal of the photographic medium: events have offered interactive events where members of the public can take part in exhibitions, or a Portfolio Review project for discovering new and promising photographers. The 2014 event features another step toward interchange on the global stage with the signing of a business agreement with Fotofest Houston in the US.

Daegu Photo Biennale, 2012 Exhibition View ⓒ Daegu Photo Biennale

Other biennials have a nature-friendly focus, with installations set up not in art galleries, but in parks or riverside ecozones. The standout example is the aGeumgang Nature Art Biennale, held in the city of Gongju and South Chungcheong Province. Since its inaugural event in 2004, the event has been organized by Yatu, a group of artists working in nature. Participating artists have a three-week production period in which they set up their own work at Yeonmisan Nature Art Park and an ecopark on the banks of the Geumgang River. Visitors are treated to works in a natural setting that transform naturally over the passage of time.

Most biennials around the world take their official names from the cities that host them. Korea is scarcely different in its aim of using the city as a foundation for achieving development and coexistence. Biennials in Korea have also followed the precedent of other major events around the world by staging exhibitions in various city locations besides exhibition halls, broadening the stage to incorporate every part of the urban area.

It’s now been over two decades since the dawn of Korea’s biennials. Some have grown to become major events that draw attention from the global art community; in other cases, there’s been a debate over whether to keep them going at all, raising questions about the very identity of the format. The quantitative growth of the past twenty years has had its share of light and darkness. What has become clear is that greater efforts for qualitative growth are a lifelong assignment, and something that needs to be a top priority for all of Korea’s biennial events.

Chang Seung-yeon

Chief editor, Art in Culture