The Gwangju Biennale is a contemporary art biennale founded in September 1995 [1] in Gwangju, South Jeolla province, South Korea. [2] The Gwangju Biennale is hosted by the Gwangju Biennale Foundation and the city of Gwangju. The Gwangju Biennale Foundation also hosts the Gwangju Design Biennale, founded in 2004.
Gwangju, formerly romanized as Kwangju, is South Korea's sixth-largest metropolis. It is a designated metropolitan city under the direct control of the central government's Home Minister. The city was also the capital of South Jeolla Province until the provincial office moved to the southern village of Namak in Muan County in 2005 because Gwangju was promoted to a metropolitan city and was independent of South Jeolla province.
Yu Yeon Kim is an independent curator based in New York City, United States and Seoul, South Korea. Kim has curated and been a commissioner of many distinguished international exhibitions of contemporary art.
Reena Saini Kallat is an Indian visual artist. She currently lives and works in Mumbai.
Sanja Iveković is a Croatian photographer, performer, sculptor and installation artist. Her work is known to tackle such issues as female identity, media, consumerism, and political strife. Considered to be one of the leading artists from the former Yugoslavia, she continues to inspire many young artists.
Yongwoo Lee is a South Korean art historian and curator based in Shanghai and Seoul. He is currently a professor at Tongji University and was previously the artistic director of the Shanghai International Art City Research Institute and a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Shanghai University.
The Kochi-Muziris Biennale is an international exhibition of contemporary art held in the city of Kochi in Kerala, India. It is the largest art exhibition in the country and the biggest contemporary art festival in Asia. The Kochi-Muziris Biennale is an initiative of the Kochi Biennale Foundation with support from the Government of Kerala. The concept of Kochi-Muziris Biennale was ideated and executed by Dr. Venu Vasudevan IAS, who was the Government of Kerala's cultural secretary. The exhibition is set in spaces across Kochi, with shows being held in existing galleries, halls, and site-specific installations in public spaces, heritage buildings and vacant structures.
Wong Chi Hang Sara is a Hong Kong-based visual artist and landscape architect. Wong graduated with a BA degree in Fine Arts from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1992 and an MA in Landscape Architecture from the University of Hong Kong.
Leila Khastoo is an artist, musician and curator based in Los Angeles, California. She has exhibited or performed at the Hammer Museum and Kunsthalle Gwangju.
Kimsooja was born in Daegu, South Korea. Kimsooja is a multi-disciplinary conceptual artist who travels between her three homes and places of work in New York City, Paris, and Seoul. In 1980 Kim graduated with a B.F.A in Painting from Hong-Ik University, Seoul and continued to pursue her M.F.A there, obtaining the degree in 1984 at the age of 27. Her origin as a painter was a crucial starting point for the development of her art. That same year, she received a scholarship to study art at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, where she studied Printmaking. Her first solo exhibition was held in 1988 at Gallery Hyundai, Seoul. Currently, her work is featured in countless international museums and galleries as well as public art fairs and other spaces. Her practice combines performance, film, photo, and site-specific installation using textile, light, and sound. Kimsooja's work investigates questions concerning the conditions of humanity, while engaging issues of aesthetics, culture, politics, and the environment. Her principle of ‘non-doing’ and ‘non-making,’ which follows a conceptual and structural investigation of performance through modes of mobility and immobility, inverts the notion of the artist as the predominant actor.
Jane Jin Kaisen is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Jeon Joonho is a South Korean artist.
Defne Ayas is a curator, educator, and publisher in the fields of contemporary art and their institutions. Raised in Istanbul and working now between Berlin and New York, Ayas directed and advised a number of art institutes, museums, and collaborative initiatives across the globe, including in the United States, Netherlands, China and Hong Kong, South Korea, Russia, Lithuania, and Italy. Exploring art's role within social and political processes, Ayas is best known for conceiving innovative exhibition and biennale formats within diverse geographies, in each instance composing interdisciplinary frameworks that provide historical anchoring and engagement with local conditions. Until June 2021, Ayas was the Artistic Director of 2021 Gwangju Biennale, together with Natasha Ginwala.
Alexie Glass-Kantor is an Australian curator. Since 2013, she has held the position of Executive Director of Artspace Visual Arts Centre in Sydney.
Tromarama is an Indonesian art collective founded by Febie Babyrose, Ruddy Hatumena and Herbert Hans.
Claire Tancons is a curator, critic, and historian of art. She was born in Guadeloupe and is currently based in Paris, after living for nearly two decades between the Caribbean, primarily in Trinidad & Tobago, and the United States, mostly in New York and New Orleans.
Hajra Waheed is a Montréal-based artist. Her multimedia practice includes works on paper, collage, sound, video, sculpture and installation. Waheed uses news accounts, extensive research and personal histories to critically examine multiple issues including: covert power, mass surveillance, cultural distortion and the traumas of displacement caused by colonialism and mass migration.
Mohammad Salemy is a Canadian artist, art critic, curator, writer . curator, writer He is sometimes referred to as "Mo Salemy".
The Korean pavilion houses South Korea's national representation during the Venice Biennale arts festivals.
Young In Hong is a visual artist from Seoul, Korea, based in Bristol, England. Hong graduated with an MA and a PhD in Art from Goldsmith College in London UK in 2012. From 1992 to 1998, she studied Sculpture at Seoul National University. Hong currently works from her studio at Spike Island in Bristol and is represented by PKM Gallery in Seoul. She teaches at Bath School of Art as Reader in Performance and Textiles.
Fatoş Üstek, born 1980 in Ankara, is a London-based independent Turkish curator and writer, working internationally with large scale organizations, biennials and festivals, as well as commissioning in the public realm. In 2008 she received her MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths College London, after completing her BA in Mathematics at Bogazici University in Istanbul.