Artists play with fire at the Gwangju Biennale

Curator confronts South Korea's turbulent past

By Gareth Harris. Exhibitions, Issue 260, September 2014

Published online: 04 September 2014

Sehee Sarah Bark's Vanished Landscape, 2013

Few other biennials are as firmly rooted in their location and historical context of the host country as the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea. Jessica Morgan, the artistic director of the tenth edition, brings together 104 artists from 36 countries, stressing that Gwangju “is not a tourist spot”. The biennial is there to “commemorate a specific political event”, a living memorial to the citizens, more than 200, who died in May 1980 when Gwangju’s population rose up against a hardline military dictatorship, thereby starting the democracy movement in Korea. “As a result, this history and context necessarily influences the exhibition,” says Morgan, who is the curator of international art at Tate Modern, London.

Her curatorial vision, conveyed in the title “Burning Down the House”, embraces the “radical spirit of ‘burning down’ the status quo”, she says. The process of annihilation, followed by renewal and regeneration, underpins the thematic framework. Works that reflect South Korea’s turbulent 20th-century past and emergence as an economic powerhouse are particularly potent.

Minouk Lim, one of 19 participating Korean artists, will show a work incorporating the remains of victims killed during the Korean War (1950-53). The bones, which were retrieved by the victims’ relatives from the site of a massacre, are housed in a container on display at the biennial. Relatives will carry a series of sculptural objects made by Lim to the exhibition site. The project, Navigation ID, 2014, “is a process of unearthing, but one that is addressed to the present day rather than the historical past”, Morgan says. Lee Bul’s performance works, includingAbortion, 1989, a searing portrayal of self-torture, mirror the fraught Korean political situation of the 1980s.

The Chinese artist Liu Xiaodong has made a vast 20-panel painting about the generation of Gwangju born after the 1980 uprising, portraying high school students in various guises. The work is one of 35 new commissions. Other artists who have made new works include Slovakian-born Roman Ondak, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa of Guatemala, and Polish artist Cezary Bodzianowski.

Morgan also aims to celebrate the “hedonism of sound and movement evoked by the title”, adding a touch of anarchy to the proceedings. “Drawing on the free and open approach [of the participating artists], I have worked with the biennale team to make an exhibition that physically embodies this commotion,” she says. 

Morgan singles out a work that epitomises this tumult. “The film by Anand Patwardhan is a euphoric work that consists purely of a song. We are Not Your Monkeys, 1996, uses song and the rhythm of the drums to drive its anti-caste message. The film traces the mythological origins of the ‘untouchables’, or Dalit, at the bottom of India’s caste system, offering the Dalit perspective on the epic Hindu legend known as the Ramayana.”

The transformative power of fire, which symbolises energy and metamorphosis, is prevalent in the works of Huma Mulji and Eduardo Basualdo; the latter will present a burned house, The Island, 2009-14, that can be entered, allowing visitors to examine a surreal interior space at its centre. The Los Angeles-based artist Sterling Ruby presents a series of specially produced burning stoves. Placed in the Biennale Square, they will blaze a trail for visitors to the biennial.

• Gwangju Biennale, Biennale Hall, Jungoui Park, 5 September-9 November