10th Gwangju Biennale | artists announced

The 10th Gwangju Biennale will bring together 105 artists from 36 countries and will include 35 new commissions, each selected for their relevance to the theme of the Biennale, Burning Down the House. It runs in Gwangju, Korea from 5 September - 9 November.

Speaking of the selected artists, Artistic Director Jessica Morgan stated: “The artists in the Biennale have embraced the radical spirit of ‘burning down’ the status quo while also celebrating the hedonism of sound and movement evoked by the title. Drawing on their free and open approach, I have worked with the Biennale team to make an exhibition that physically embodies this commotion. Burning Down the House shows that the strength of artistic innovation, invocation and opposition is alive and well.”

Demonstrating the dynamic, political and material production of the artists, the Biennale exhibition will be a carefully choreographed but at times explosive exploration of sound, movement, image and form. Throughout the entire Biennale space the graphic contribution of the Spanish-born, London-based design duo El Ultimo Grito presents a ‘smoke’-motif that draws together the exhibition architecture, designed by Delvendahl Martin.

Engaging with the unfinished history of the Korean War, Minouk Lim produces a new performance, video and sculptural work that assumes a significant presence both in the Biennale square and within the Halls of the exhibition. Also occupying the Biennale square and announcing the exhibition to the arriving public is a major new commission by Jeremy Deller, alongside the specially produced burning stoves of Sterling Ruby.

Located primarily in the Biennale Halls, the exhibition treats each of the five large-scale spaces as connected but independently atmospheric zones, their entrances and exits defined by new commissions and existing works by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, Jack Goldstein, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Carsten Höller, Pierre Huyghe, Jeong A Koo, and Piotr Uklański that draw attention to the transitional experience of entering into the Biennale through actions, performances and art works that animate and incite.

Running throughout the time of the exhibition, both inside the exhibition halls and within specially customised spaces, are new theatrical, dance, and performative commissions by the Japanese/Korean collaborators Ei Arakawa and Inza Lim, the Paris-based, French-Argentinean dance duo Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud, London-based Korean artist Young in Hong, Korean dancer and choreographer Geumhyung Jeong, and the agit-prop Seoul-based Okin Collective.

Read more about the full artist programme

Image: Okin Collective, Operation-For Something Black and Hot (still), 2012. Video.