The 15th Gwangju Biennale Pavilion
The Gwangju Biennale Pavilion began in 2018 with the participation of three organizations, aiming to expand the network of art and cultural institutions in Korea and abroad. The number of pavilions and participating organizations grew steadily to nine in 2023, and in 2024, the 15th Gwangju Biennale Pavilion will feature 31 pavilions across Gwangju, including Yangnim-dong and Dongmyeong-dong, with creative artistic entities from around 30 countries, cities, and institutions.
The Gwangju Biennale pavilions will not only resonate with Pansori, a soundscape of the 21st century, but also generate a wealth of sights and discourse by building distinctive exhibitions that showcase different angles of view. A variety of events and programs expand the art experience for visitors and inspire imagination in the community.
Pansori, a soundscape of the 21st century
2024.09.07 ~ 2024.12.01
For its 30th anniversary, the 15th Gwangju Biennale gathers 72 artists from 30 countries; Pansori, a soundscape of the 21st century is an attempt to map the complexity of the contemporary world. Conflictual borders, anti-migration walls, confinement, social distance, segregation policies... These seemingly dissimilar topics share a common point, which is space, and its political organization. The main effect of climate change is the apparition of a new topology, a new world map in which carbon dioxide and urban life, desertification and migration, deforestation and social struggles, destruction of animal ecosystems and vegetal invasions, all have become brutally interconnected. Pansori, a soundscape of the 21st century is an operatic exhibition about the space we inhabit, from our housing to the human occupation of the planet. And as landscapes are also soundscapes, the exhibition is built as a narrative connecting musical and visual forms. Dating back to the 17th century, pansori is a Korean musical genre anchored in its native territory, a symbol of the relationships between sound and space. In Korean, pansori literally means "the noise from the public place," which might also be translated as the voice of the subalterns. The 15th Gwangju Biennale intends to recreate the original spirit of pansori, presenting artists who explore contemporary space through dialogue with the living forms around them. Art, too, is a specific place, one which allows us to re-think the space shared between humans, machines, animals, spirits, and organic life — our relational space. Space is also a knot that connects all emancipation struggles, from feminism to decolonization or LGBT+ rights; the division of space is always geopolitical. A number of artists in this exhibition address these spatial issues by representing contemporary landscapes and urban conditions, saturated with human presence, or the effects of industrialization on natural ecosystems. Others open up the space itself by engaging in dialogues with machines, animals, bacteria and other life forms, or examining the molecular composition of the world. And still others are working at a cosmic scale, inventing a contemporary shamanism. From extreme density to desertic expanses, Pansori, a soundscape of the 21st century presents itself as an opera you can walk into.
Artists
Haseeb Ahmed
Deniz Aktaş
Noel W. Anderson
Andrius Arutiunian
Kevin Beasley
Wendimagegn Belete
Bianca Bondi
Dora Budor
Peter Buggenhout
Angela Bulloch
Alex Cerveny
Cheng Xinhao
Choi Haneyl
Gaëlle Choisne
Anna Conway
Binta Diaw
John E. Dowell Jr.
Hayden Dunham
Liam Gillick
Loris Gréaud
Matthias Groebel
Matthew Angelo Harrison
Marguerite Humeau
Agata Ingarden
Hyejoo Jun
Hyoungsan, Jun
Hyeongsuk Kim
Jayi Kim
YoungEun Kim
Dominique Knowles
Agnieszka Kurant
Hyewon Kwon
Netta Laufer
Brianna Leatherbury
Yein Lee
Oswaldo Maciá
Mira Mann
Cinthia Marcelle
Vladislav Markov
Beaux Mendes
Myriam Mihindou
Na Mira
Saadia Mirza
David Noonan
Katja Novitskova
Josèfa Ntjam
Emeka Ogboh
Frida Orupabo
Lydia Ourahmane
Mimi Park
Philippe Parreno
Amol K Patil
Harrison Pearce
Lucy Raven
Tabita Rezaire
Marina Rheingantz
Marina Rosenfeld
Max Hooper Schneider
Franck Scurti
Soomin Shon
Jura Shust
Sofya Skidan
Anastasia Sosunova
Jakob Kudsk Steensen
Sung Tieu
Julian Abraham “Togar”
Unmake Lab
Yuyan Wang
Ambera Wellmann
Kandis Williams
Phillip Zach
Saâdane Afif
