The Busan Biennale 2014, titled as Inhabiting the World, will be held for 64 days from the 20th of September to the 22nd of November at several venues including Busan Museum of Art, and Busan Cultural Center. The Busan Biennale 2014 will be shaped with a main exhibition, two of special exhibitions, diverse academic programs, international exchange events and participatory events.

First of all, curated by Olivier Kaeppelin, the artistic director, the main exhibition will be opened at the Busan Museum of Art. Kaeppelin claims that artists may have more efficient, sustainable analysis and alterations for various social issues and transformations than experts of a certain field or academics would do. In this light, as he adds, the ‘Inhabiting the World’ implies active attitudes and liveliness towards the world as well as willingness to respond to the world as well as change it, which resemble the characteristics of the city, Busan. By exhibiting art pieces that could constitute evidences of the contemporaneity and implement the future, Kaeppelin would like to represent the consciousness that are still remained by contemporary art and artists in most incongruent, incoherent time of the most materialist society.

At the same time, Kaeppelin attempts to develop particular education programs so that not only can the exhibited works be smoothly understood and appreciated but also the exhibition spaces could act as pedagogical venues.

Along with the main exhibition, special exhibitions will be comprised of ‘Biennale Archive’ and ‘Asian Curatorial’. The Biennale Archive exhibition, titled as ‘Voyage to Biennale – 50 years of Contemporary Korean Art in Overseas Biennales’, will be held in Busan Cultural Center and will be curated by Lee Kenshu (the previous editor in chief of Monthly Art). Bringing together leading Korean artists’ works, ‘Biennale Archive’ will exhibit artworks that may represent the new contemporary. This archive exhibition will survey the biennale history from ‘Biennale de Paris’ and exhibit the related references chronologically, which will become a great opportunity to see the modern history of Korean art becoming radically international.

Another special exhibition, ‘Asian Curatorial’ will be co-curated by Asian young curators working in major cities of Asia. Together with about 5 emerging curators who are recommended by a few of Asian Biennales, the special exhibition will create a hugely experimental scene, in which diverse Asian artists’ and curators’ brand-new works and their original insights may be disclosed. Moreover, this exhibition attracts more expectations as it will be palpable visual outcomes from interchanges for years with other Asian biennales situated in port cities as Busan.

In addition, during the opening of the exhibition, there will be various events including academic programs, international exchange programs, participatory programs and so on. Firstly, the academic programs include lectures, field trips, a public hearing, panel discussions that will open a discursive platform for the Busan Biennale 2014 and forums in association with AICA. Discussions with representatives from Asian Biennales and with chief editors of major Asian art journals will be held as a part of the international exchange programs. Plus, the Busan Biennale will be boosted with Agora projects with smaller forums and artist talk events and Biennale Lounge as a participatory program. The Agora project and Biennale Lounge as participating events will be conceived and realized in cooperation with other local institutions and organizations in Busan.

The balance between the main exhibition as being further refined and the more experimental special exhibitions

In the Busan Biennale 2014, the refined main exhibition comprised with masterpieces and the special exhibition with younger artists as being more experimental will be organized in harmony to be shown to the audiences. The main exhibition, curated by Olivier Kaeppelin, will focus on renowned pieces and its working process in close relation to the theme of the entire exhibition. Whilst Kaeppelin, as a leading curator of the international art scene, would create an exquisite, refined exhibition, one of the two special exhibition, ‘Asian Curatorial’, will be co-curated by emerging curators in Asia. This might be realized in the less-classy forms than the main one but rather become a more active, fresher experience, which will balance the entire Busan Biennale, ‘Inhabiting the World’.

History of Korean Modern and Contemporary art at one view

Introducing the history of Korean artists pioneering within the history of international biennales, ‘Biennale Archive’ of the Busan Biennale 2014 will attract public attentions. In the Biennale Archive, titled as ‘Voyage to Biennale – 50 years of Contemporary Korean Art in Overseas Biennales’, Korean modern and contemporary art will be shown at one view. This document-based exhibition will show historically crucial artworks by leading Korean artists and secondary references from ‘Biennale de Paris’, 1961, which was the first international biennale exhibition that Korean artists had been invited to the very recent events. Accompanying the special exhibitions referred above, the Busan Biennale 2014 will become an exhibition that may widen the range of contemporary art in the society with brand-new methodologies.

With diverse cultural bodies involved

Along with the exhibitions, there will be various events and programs involved in the framework of the Busan Biennale 2014, for which a series of collaborations amongst organizations and local bodies will be consolidated at both domestic and international levels. Organizing diverse events including academic programs such as workshops, panel discussions, international exchange programs with the Asian biennale representatives’ meetings, the Asian chief editors’ meeting, and local events as Agora project, Biennale Lounge, the Committee aims to complement the Busan Biennale 2014 together with local organizations in Busan and Asian cultural bodies. The audience will be able to encounter events with well-organized contents, accompanied by more intensive connections and cooperation with other organizations. In addition, through the events, the Busan Biennale attempts to create discursive platforms on which the exhibition could be viewed at an international level and at the same time to construct collaborating systems amongst other Asian biennales and local cultural organizations for more opened-spaces for communications.

Courtesy of Busan Biennale, for further information please visit www.busanbiennale.org.