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Exhibition view: Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, 13th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (1 April–9 May 2021). Courtesy Gwangju Biennale Foundation. Photo: Sang tae Kim.

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Postponed twice due to Covid-19, the 13th Gwangju Biennale, Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning (1 April–9 May 2021) has finally opened with around 450 artworks by 69 artists, including 40 new commissions.

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Directed by Defne Ayas and Natasha Ginwala, the exhibition gathers a multitude of spiritual and technological perspectives that encompass ancestral, feminist, queer, indigenous, and shamanist theories and practices while addressing discourses on new technologies such as neural networks and deep learning.

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Jacolby Satterwhite, We Are In Hell When We Hurt Each Other (2020). Exhibition view: Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, 13th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (1 April–9 May 2021). Courtesy Gwangju Biennale Foundation. Photo: Sang tae Kim.

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Though the exhibition period has been halved, the scale of the Biennale has expanded. Alongside the international programmes of the Gwangju Biennale Commission and Pavilion Projects and collateral exhibition MaytoDay, the Biennale is presented across eight venues in Gwangju, and extended through online programmes.

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The main exhibition,《Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning》, is staged across theGwangju Biennale Exhibition Hall, Gwangju National Museum, Gwangju Theater, and Horanggasy Artpolygon, presenting eight different themes in each platform to form one continuous narrative.

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Works by Pacita Abad on view in Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, 13th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (1 April–9 May 2021). Courtesy Gwangju Biennale Foundation. Photo: Sang tae Kim.

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Gallery 1 in the Exhibition Hall, free of charge for the first time, establishes a communal mindset through which to explore the Biennale's planetary focus. Here, a black circular wall forms an outer and inner circle, while robots move around disinfecting the gallery space to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

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On the one side of the black wall, taking up roughly one third of the inner circle of Gallery 1, is Moon Kyungwon's woven carpet installation 〈Promise Park〉 (2021). Intended as a 'park' where visitors can sit together, the 'social tapestry' visualises the transformation of the urban landscape in Gwangju, from Japanese colonialism to modern industrialisation, through abstract patterns in faded blues, browns, and greys.

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Works by Moon Kyungwon and Lee Gap-Chul on view in Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, 13th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (1 April–9 May 2021). Courtesy Gwangju Biennale Foundation. Photo: Sang tae Kim.

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On the other side of the inner circle of Gallery 1, John Gerrard's annual simulation 〈Corn Work (Corrib)〉 (2020), shows four straw figures drawn from Celtic paganism performing a ceremonial dance by tracing a circular motion that references cycles of agriculture production. To create these virtual figures, Gerard prototyped choreographers of various ages and created a perpetual choreography by using motion matching and neural network technologies.

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In Gerrard's video, time is synchronised with the solar cycle and space is synchronised with the tides and flow of the River Corrib in Galway. Within this constantly evolving landscape, populated by local folk figures dancing like spreading seeds, Corn Work (Corrib) asks visitors to engage in circular thinking through a synthesis of natural and virtual systems.

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John Gerrard, Corn Work (Corrib) (2020). Exhibition view: Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, 13th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (1 April–9 May 2021). Courtesy Gwangju Biennale Foundation. Photo: Sang tae Kim.

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Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning showcases a broad range of works from the Gwangju National Museum, the Museum of Shamanism, and the Gahoe Minhwa Museum in Seoul, intimately woven into curated constellations. There is a particular focus on female shamans and goddesses amid these artefacts, which referenced Korean folk religion and shamanic and Buddhist rituals.

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In the outer circle of Gallery 1, Stone Grandmother comprises an undated ritual object in the shape of a human head made from a stone and Korean traditional clothes taken from the Museum of Shamanism, along with a 20th-century painting of the unknown Great Spirit Grandmother, which depicts a woman in traditional clothes holding a medicinal plant.

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Great Spirit Grandmother (20th century). Collection of the Gahoe Minhwa Museum, Seoul. Exhibition view: Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, 13th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (1 April–9 May 2021). Courtesy Gwangju Biennale Foundation. Photo: Sang tae Kim.

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These objects and iconography are tuned to the articulations of collective intelligence in a networked world that Gallery 1 presents, which expands into concepts of indigenous cosmology, feminism and queer culture, post-humanism, and matrilineal collectives in the remaining galleries in the Exhibition Hall.

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※ This article was originally published in OCULA, and reposted under authority of OCULA

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※ Click to Read the Original Article: https://ocula.com/magazine/features/13th-gwangju-biennale-maps-a-multiverse/

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