The Gwangju Biennale is organized by the Gwangju Biennale Foundation every two years. As the most prominent art festival in Asia, the Gwangju Biennale has been bringing distinguished exhibits and public discussions that reflect the Asian identity for the past 20 years.
The 11th biennale poses a profound question: “"What is the essence of art in this age?”" It is to place art at the core in order to recover our confidence in art and its power. This year’'s exhibit will maximize community participation and bring art inside our society. The Gwangju Biennale has been partnering with art galleries around the world that are named a "biennale fellow". Through this, Gwangju will be a place to witness the lively, global cultural scene.
AC/E is supporting in this year's edition "LAMENT OF THE NEWT" by Fernando Garcia Dory and "NOKDU BOOKSTORE FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD" by Dora Garcia.
The project Of García Dory connects forms and the political genealogy of the little theater movement from 40 years ago, with current socio-ecological struggles and a critical questioning of prevalent urban development models and the existing political support structures for it. It aims as well to reconnect Gwangju city with its ecosystemic flows and environmental questions, and in summary, to collectively propose the future projection of different existing tendencies, and to exercise foreseeing in order to act.
NOKDU… will be a meeting place in the middle of the Gwangju Biennale exhibition, a meeting place that adopts the form of a mythic bookstore, the NOKDU bookstore, which played a fundamental role in the events of the May 18 revolution in Gwangju. This bookstore form I give to the meeting place I want to construct is not a historical reconstruction of the original NOKDU bookstore, but a construction of how I imagine this bookstore to be, following my readings, my own emotional and cultural background, and the testimony of different people; a construction happening in a sort of anachronic moment that puts together the past (1980) the present, and the future of an event that catalysed the history of Korea.
The 11th biennale poses a profound question: “"What is the essence of art in this age?”" It is to place art at the core in order to recover our confidence in art and its power. This year’'s exhibit will maximize community participation and bring art inside our society. The Gwangju Biennale has been partnering with art galleries around the world that are named a "biennale fellow". Through this, Gwangju will be a place to witness the lively, global cultural scene.
AC/E is supporting in this year's edition "LAMENT OF THE NEWT" by Fernando Garcia Dory and "NOKDU BOOKSTORE FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD" by Dora Garcia.
The project Of García Dory connects forms and the political genealogy of the little theater movement from 40 years ago, with current socio-ecological struggles and a critical questioning of prevalent urban development models and the existing political support structures for it. It aims as well to reconnect Gwangju city with its ecosystemic flows and environmental questions, and in summary, to collectively propose the future projection of different existing tendencies, and to exercise foreseeing in order to act.
NOKDU… will be a meeting place in the middle of the Gwangju Biennale exhibition, a meeting place that adopts the form of a mythic bookstore, the NOKDU bookstore, which played a fundamental role in the events of the May 18 revolution in Gwangju. This bookstore form I give to the meeting place I want to construct is not a historical reconstruction of the original NOKDU bookstore, but a construction of how I imagine this bookstore to be, following my readings, my own emotional and cultural background, and the testimony of different people; a construction happening in a sort of anachronic moment that puts together the past (1980) the present, and the future of an event that catalysed the history of Korea.