Busan Biennale 2024 unveils artists for ‘Seeing in the Dark’ theme

The Busan Biennale 2024, hosted by the City of Busan and the Busan Biennale Organizing Committee announced that it will open on August 17 and run through October 20. The Organizing Committee has confirmed the exhibition’s theme, Seeing in the Dark, and is accelerating preparations for the event, including the selection of exhibitors and artworks. Led by co-artistic directors Vera Mey and Philippe Pirotte, the exhibition will utilize venues in the original city center.

Participating artists span Korea and beyond, including works from Golrokh Nafisi with Ahmadali Kadivar (Iran), Bang Jeong A (Korea), Cheikh Ndiaye (Senegal), Song Cheon (Korea), Yun Suknam (Korea), Nguyễn Phương Linh & Trương Quế Chi (Vietnam), Doowon Lee (Korea), Eugene Jung (Korea), John Vea (Aotearoa/Tonga), and Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson (Ghana), and more.

Busan Biennale 2024 Exhibition Theme: Seeing in the Dark

The theme of the Busan Biennale 2024, Seeing in the Dark, proposes to reimagine where humans stand in today’s “darkness.” This is an attempt to rethink today’s world outside the framework of conventional thinking in the context of contradictory situations (such as emerging systemic changes and surveillance) and normative social structures, and to find the positions of self and nature at a higher level. For the purposes of the exhibition, “darkness” and “seeing” are interpreted in a broad sense, which includes our expanded senses and enlightenment beyond physical concepts.

Seeing in the Dark may seem like an impossible or restricted act, but it actually symbolizes a new way of looking at our current situation. In this context, the concept of pirate utopia, an early form of autonomous anarchy society, and the Buddhist concept regarding the monastery, which operates apart from the mundane world, will be introduced here. By including these two concepts, which are both a community of decision-making through consultation and a space of liberation, the theme reflects the curatorial intention of exploring a wide range of mentalities and cultures, while also rethinking the artistic spaces—and the world as a whole—required of the times.

For this year’s exhibition, we ideally wanted the works to be driven in autonomous and unexpected ways, without a centralized hierarchy. Through their works, the participating artists are demonstrating how art can be rewilding, and viewers are invited to experience the possibility of transcending the self and rewilding through the experimental nature of the exhibition organization. Deception and capriciousness, an important aesthetic strategy of this exhibition, will allow a playful approach to identity and ideology instead of an essentialist or positive approach.

Darkness, a keyword in the curatorial direction of the exhibition, is a space of emancipation and transformation. Specifically, it is a space outside the framework of thought provided by normative social structures, and an area where a rethinking of the world can take place. The darkness encountered in some of the exhibition’s spaces invites the viewer to this experience not as a consumer who is controlled, but as a subject who must use their senses to find their way around. Indeed, the exhibition—including these compositions—aims to be a voyage full of fluid, unstable, disorienting, and even a nauseating multiplicity of experiences, dialogues, and uncertain points of view.

Utilizing a Variety of Venues: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Busan – Former Hyundai Showroom – Choryang House

The organizing committee re-planned all the other spaces except for the Museum
of Contemporary Art, Busan. The Former Hyundai Showroom, located at 12, Jungang-daero 132 beon-gil, Jung-gu, Busan, used to be a car display center, with each floor having an area of 4,799.1 ㎡. The building is composed of a spacious hall and several rooms that were previously utilized as offices, which will help give the exhibition a unique flair. Choryang House, a two-story house built in the 1960s and located at 117-8 Choryangsang-ro, Dong-gu, Busan, will also be used at Busan Biennale 2024.

The house was built in the shape of a ship, mirroring the architectural style of the era in which it was built, and suggests that the owner was once engaged in the shipping industry. All the exhibition spaces are closely related to our real life—a reflection of the exhibition’s theme—while also stimulating the visitor’s curiosity and imagination as artistically bright, interesting places that contain darkness within them as well.

Collaborative Programs in Various Formats: Pirate Panels, a Pirate Carnival, a Sound Project, and Much More

The Busan Biennale 2024 will also offer collaborative programs to expand exchanges of locality through collaboration with cultural organizations, exhibition organizers, and participating artists from both local and overseas regions. They will be realized in the form of projects that combine a variety of genres based on the exhibition theme and curatorial intentions.

Using Nika Dubrovsky & David Rolfe Graeber’s texts Another Art World as a starting point, Pirate Panels, a talks program, will address keywords such as the relationship between the real and the imaginary, representations of “piracy” and deception, and the pirate utopia. There will also be a Pirate Carnival, a performance by collaborating organizations, participating artists, and viewers.

With a lecture, sound performance, and unique costume display, the project becomes a festival where existing values and worldviews are subverted. Inside the exhibition space, there will also be sound stations that will serve as sound archives, as well as DJ tables and a sound system for performances, which will enable listening sessions and an online pop-up live radio broadcast. The related programs will satisfy the audiovisual senses of viewers, examine contemporary issues, and invite people to think outside the box and enter a space filled with new imaginations and possibilities.

Busan Biennale to Open in August for the First Time Ever

The Organizing Committee announced that the Busan Biennale 2024 will open two weeks earlier than usual, and will run for 65 days, from August 17 to October 20. The Busan Biennale, which began as the Busan Youth Biennale in 1981, changed its name to the Busan Biennale in 2000 upon the establishment of itself as a corporation, and has since continued the tradition of opening in September.

This year’s move reflects the Organizing Committee’s direction to add a cultural and artistic aspect to the city of Busan in the summer, when many feel that the city is at its finest, and to actively attract family unit viewers on vacation.

The adjustment of the exhibition period is expected to provide a good opportunity for viewers to fully enjoy the natural environment of Busan and the sea, while also immersing themselves in the sea of art and culture. As Executive Director Seong-Youn Kim so aptly said, “This year’s biennale is expected to be different from other biennales—with an even more interesting theme than in the past and a kaleidoscope of content—and we will do our best to live up to the excellent reviews we’ve received so far.”

Co-Artistic Directors Vera Mey and Philippe Pirotte said of the Biennale, “Busan is a city of outsiders, and we have diversified the exhibition venues to capture this history and become part of the rhythm of daily life. We welcome everyone to visit the Biennale in person in order to experience the integration of our exhibiting artists with this beautiful city.”

The Busan Biennale 2024 opens on 17th August, 2024 and runs through 20th October 2024 across the Museum of Contemporary Art Busan

©2024 Busan Biennale 2024