Gwangju Biennale 2026: Travelling Through Time & Cultures

Opening-of-the-Poland-Pavilion_fot-Kuba-Celej-IAM_16.jpg, default, Otwarcie Pawilonu Polski na Gwangju Biennale 2026, fot. Kuba Celej / IAM

#photography & visual arts

This year’s Gwangju Biennale revolves around change. However, this change doesn’t signify a turning point, but rather a slow process that takes place within the body, within our memory, or in the cyclical rhythms of nature.

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The 'Rites of Passage' exhibition at the Gwangju Biennale 2026, photo: Kuba Celej / IAM

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Ho Tsu Nyen was tired. He had just finished working on a large exhibition and felt empty inside. He was travelling by underground to his studio in his home the city-state of Singapore. On the ride home, he opened a book – the poems of the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke from 1908. The Archaic Torso of Apollo is about the interaction between the viewer and an antique statue, which leads the reader to its conclusion that ‘You must change your life.’ It’s right there and then, in the racing train, under the influence of Rilke, that Ho Tsu Nyen felt that new opportunities were opening before him. He looked around, the people were the same, all busy with their own issues, completely unaware of his breakthrough.

When a few months later he was chosen to be the artistic director of the 16^th edition of the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea, one of the most prestigious art festivals in contemporary Asia, he thought back to that moment. And it was that moment that gave the biennale its theme: You must change your life.

The idea of forced change resonates particularly strongly in the Korean city of Gwangju, which in 1980 was the centre of a popular uprising against authoritarian rule. It was brutally suppressed by the military, an event that left its mark both on the fabric of the city and on the lives of its inhabitants, who spent years coming to terms with their own traumas and those of their loved ones. Ultimately, however, democracy prevailed, and the city became the epicentre of a rapid transformation – one that occurs swiftly but whose social costs are enormous. Ho Tsu Nyen, however, in thinking about the biennial, wanted to move away from this understanding of change – he preferred to focus on slow, sometimes barely perceptible processes. On everyday practice, attention and care, which only bear fruit after many years. On personal experience, which ultimately shapes the world.

The central idea behind the biennial’s concept therefore stems from the moment when an artist from Singapore was reading, on the underground, a poem by a German poet which had been written whilst the poet was looking at an ancient sculpture, probably at the Louvre in Paris.

City of blood, city of art

A voice seeping from loudspeakers in the gigantic exhibition hall in the north of the city, ensures that visitors don’t forget about the theme of the biennial, hypnotically repeating: ‘You must change your life.’ This year’s biennial explores change on various levels – molecular, physical, landscape and cosmic. In total, we will see works by 43 artists from 22 countries. But that’s not all. There’s also room for the forces of nature. Across the exhibition halls, one will notice volcanic rocks brought from the Korean island of Jeju – the result of years and years of lava activity.

Some of the artists’ works also took many years to create. Amanda Heng from Singapore spent 30 years taking photographs of herself with her mother. In this way, she created Another Woman in Gwangju, which documents the traces that time leaves on bodies and the subtle shifts in the dynamics of care between the two women. The same goes for Tehching Hsieh: the artist, who is originally from Taiwan and now lives in New York, imposes strict rules on himself in his performances and adheres to them for a year or longer. On one occasion, he lived in a small cage for 12 months; on another, he spent the entire time outdoors – forbidding himself from entering any buildings. In yet another performance, he tied himself to the artist Linda Montano with a rope for a year. Through his actions, Hsieh explores the relationship between life and art, demonstrating the triumph of will over time.

The exhibition also presents pieces so long, that they are practically impossible to watch in full. American-born, Taipei-based artist James T. Hong’s Apologies looks closer at the state apparatus as it attempts to rectify its mistakes – it is a compilation of public apologies from politicians. It lasts a total of 11 hours. We see Bill Clinton expressing regret over the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Willy Brandt apologising for the Holocaust, and even former Polish President Andrzej Duda apologising for anti-Semitism.

Many of the works refer directly to the history of Gwangju. The biennale, which has been held here since 1995, was conceived to help the city come to terms with its difficult history through art. The piece May Mothers House documents the activities of a women’s club whose members either took part in the 1980 uprising themselves or struggled with family traumas as a result of it. Since 2022, they have been taking part in painting workshops with the artist Joo Hong. They have been putting down their memories of the rebellion on paper, as well as their subsequent experiences – of husbands struggling with alcoholism, of nature offering solace, and of reflections on the hard-won democracy. The exhibition features 322 paintings created by them, accompanied by interviews. They bear witness to human resilience, and also to the fact that art can truly help to change lives. ‘Thanks to the biennial, the City of Blood has been transformed into the City of Art,’ reads the description of a sound installation by another artist, Sunik Kim. ‘Residents were able to rekindle the spirit of rebellion through culture.’

We will, however, find another City of Blood at the biennale.

A soul of glass

In 2014, Han Kang, a little-known Korean writer born in Gwangju, spent the autumn and winter in Warsaw. She painted the door to her flat white, gazed out of the window at the stately poplars, and waited for the first snow. ‘Why do old memories keep coming back to me in this foreign city?’ she wonders. ‘All of this died long ago. The trees, the birds, the roads, the streets, the houses, the trams and the people,’ she observed. The fate of Warsaw – a foreign city reduced to rubble following the suppression of the uprising against the Nazis in 1944 – brought to her mind the fate of her own sister, who died shortly after birth. Han Kang captured her experiences of Warsaw in the moving The White Book, published in 2016. Eight years later, she would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Less than a year after that event, Polish curator Paulina Olszewska opened the book. Right at the beginning, she read:

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We are perched on this sharp edge of time – a transparent precipice that renews itself every moment – and we press on. Restlessly, we place one foot on the edge of the time we have lived through so far, and without hesitation we stretch the other out into the void, without even a fraction of a second to bring our will into play. It is not a matter of particular courage; we simply have no other choice. I am aware of this risk now, at this very moment. I am recklessly stepping into a time I have not yet lived through, into the space of a book I have not yet written.

Author

Trans. Deborah Smith

This passage led her to the concept of the exhibition at the Poland Pavilion at the Gwangju Biennale – Rites of Passage. For centuries, rituals have marked moments of change; but today, with society is becoming more secular, people are defining important moments in their lives for themselves and developing their own private rituals. The works by artists in the Polish pavilion – one of 27 national pavilions scattered throughout the city – revolve around this idea.

Glass shatters around us at the entrance. This is the 2016 video installation Enjoy the Silence by Anna Zaradny. It shows panes of glass being smashed, without sound. The shards fall hypnotically at various angles, sometimes resembling a waterfall, at other times stardust. They serve as a reminder of the illusory nature of our perception. When we see glass being smashed, we expect to hear a sound; we automatically want to protect ourselves. Everyone has had experience with a sharp shard. The work reminds us that most narratives are a form of conditioning; it encourages us to free ourselves from them and move on.

What’s interesting is, that when reading Han Kang’s book A Boy Comes = Human Acts about the May uprising in Gwangju, Zaradny found a passage about the soul and glass, which gave her piece new contexts. A veteran says to a friend:

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What do you think: does the soul exist? Maybe it’s like glass? Because glass is transparent and breaks easily. It’s in its nature. That’s why one has to deal with glass objects with care. If they break or shatter, they no longer serve their purpose and have to be disposed of. We used to have unshattered glass. It was authentically transparent and hard, although no one ever checked if it was actually glass. Shattering ourselves into pieces, we showed others that we had a soul. We found out that we were people made of real glass.

Author

Trans. NR

In this way, the Warsaw depicted in The White Book is linked to Gwangju from A Boy Comes in the Poland Pavilion.

A silk rite, a steel rite

Let’s continue. In the first space, Alicja Bielawska presents a rite of passage that grounds us in everyday life and cyclical patterns. The installation Place for Gathering Time comprises several works that define the space. To achieve this, the artist uses vessels and textiles, which are inextricably linked not only to everyday life but also to rituals; they serve as vessels for memories.

Two shelves are lined with vessels of various sizes and shapes – they resemble vases and bowls. They are all empty, or rather full of potential. They are used for storage – whether of tangible or intangible things, such as memories. The artist makes the vessels by hand, using an archaic method – coil building. She does not throw them on a potter’s wheel, but forms them from coils of clay; they are therefore irregular, crooked and off-centre. They bear the marks of her hands and her labour.

The fabrics, meanwhile, are made of silk. They hang from structures whose form is reminiscent of screens, but which consist of multiple panels. Bielawska dyes them by hand using plants, which allows her to achieve unique colours, much like when painting. She uses elderberries, spruce cones, onion skins, tansy and the roots of the rose madder. Apart from madder, she gathers all of the materials herself in Podlasie – a borderland region where cultures have always intermingled. It’s also home to szeptuchy – traditional healers – and folk knowledge is still very much alive there. When gathering plants, the artist must bear in mind the seasonal cycles – tansy in July, elderberries in August. The dyed fabrics carry this knowledge. The breeze from the air conditioning and the passing people make them move. As if they were breathing.

In the next room, steel ribs grow from the walls, forming an eerie corridor. This is the installation Ribs by the duo Inside Job (Ula Lucińska and Michał Knychaus), one of three they are exhibiting. Inspired by ribbed structures that provide support in architecture, ships, aircraft fuselages and, of course, living organisms, it’s what remains after their time ends. They connects the past with the future. These ribs are made of stainless steel, one of the most scratch-resistant materials, which is used in the medical and food industries. The steel used in the Inside Job’s works is recycled, sourced from metal sheets discarded during the production process. A partner company allows the two artists to use these offcuts. Such recycling is significant on a symbolic level – it involves taking material that has been discarded and giving it a new lease on life.

Steel also features in another piece of theirs, Entwined. Here, jewellery-like cut-outs made from this material are interwoven with real thistles. Organic matter that transforms into steel. The duo have long been fascinated by these plants – fragile yet resilient. They grow in areas where other vegetation struggles to survive: post-industrial ruins and places affected by drought. In Entwined, we see thistles that the duo brought back from Greece; they often collect them whilst exploring contemporary industrial ruins. It’s an interest in the collapse of a grand idea, a lost dream that collides with a reality in which it no longer fits into. Industry relocates because it constantly needs more space, different machinery, new resources. What remains of this dream of development is also a skeleton, which marks the beginning of a new, more inhuman reality. In such spaces, the past also intertwines with visions of the future. Inside Job’s studio in Poznań is situated on such a site, the Stomil factory, which used to manufacture tyres and is now being phased out. Nature is reclaiming the site, with all its thistles.

In the next part of the Polish pavilion, Korean artist Yeesookyung invites us to meditate. In the series of works entitled Portable Temple, we see images of meditating Buddhas and bodhisattvas, but shown from behind. The wings of the screen on which they are depicted can be closed, creating a space of seclusion. This new perspective allows us to meditate ‘together with’ the figures rather than ‘opposite them’, as is customary. How, then, does the relationship between deity and devotee change? The series is complemented by two diptychs which similarly depict Tara, one of the few female bodhisattvas in Tibetan Buddhism, also known as the ‘mother of all Buddhas’. It is said that she declared that even when she became a Buddha, she would remain a woman; she did not pray for rebirth in a man’s body, as a woman in Buddhism ought to. That is why the figure of Tara is an inspiration to many women today. ‘Although the Buddha, after all, has no gender,’ the artist adds philosophically when I ask her about Tara. Believers, however, do.

Mandalas from Poland & Picasso from Korea

Not unlike Tara from Yeesookyung’s work, deep in meditation, was Polish artist Urszula Broll. The scent of incense filled the air; it was May 1976 in Katowice, the industrial heart of Poland, in the attic of an old tenement block. Down below, a May Day procession was marching through the streets, no doubt celebrating miners, steelworks and labour leaders. This is the scene described by Rafał Księżyk in his book Śnialnia. Śląski underground (The Dream Room: The Silesian Underground), a polyphonic account of the artistic collective Oneiron, in which Broll was active alongside her husband, Andrzej Urbanowicz. After World War II, during the Stalinist era, when religion was suppressed, many young people in Poland experienced a spiritual void. Members of Oneiron secretly took an interest in esotericism and the occult. From the 1970s onwards, ‘the temptation of Buddhism began to take root among them’; they began translating into Polish of literature brought in from Germany, such as The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Over time, their studio was transformed into a zendo – a space for meditation. They became pioneers of Buddhism in Poland under communism.

In the 1960s, Urszula Broll said she painted ‘geometric watercolours’. In her paintings from that period, a solar symbol occupies the centre, whilst the rest of the space is filled with kaleidoscopic reflections of circles, triangles and squares. Księżyk writes that she painted every day, saying that ‘the paintings just flew out of her’. When, a few years later, she was given a book of reproductions of Hindu tantric art, she was surprised. What she had been painting intuitively resembled mandalas – an art form that had accompanied meditators for millennia.

Unfortunately, the quiet and reserved Broll, who had lived in a house in the mountains since 1983, both as a painter and a pioneer of Buddhism, remained in the shadow of her then ex-husband, Andrzej Urbanowicz. It was not until a few months after her death that the much-talked-about exhibition Atman Means Breath at Warsaw’s Królikarnia ensured that her paintings took their rightful place in Polish art history. It’s therefore particularly pleasing that her ‘geometric watercolours’ are also featured in the exhibition Rites of Passage, serving as a reminder that spirituality transcends politics and cultures.

Korean painter Park Saengkwang, however, took a spiritual journey in the opposite direction to that of Broll – from a different culture back to his own. He was born in 1904, a few years before the Japanese occupation of the Korean Peninsula began. He travelled to Kyoto to study painting under masters of the nihonga style, who drew on Japanese tradition but modernised it to provide a response to the increasingly popular ‘Western’ style of painting. Following Korea’s liberation in 1945, Park returned to his homeland. However, his work – heavily influenced by Japanese art – was not well received by the artistic community. So he turned back to his native traditions.

In his later works, he drew on his native shamanic traditions, which were first suppressed by the Confucian elites during the Joseon period and later by Christians. He travelled around the country visiting temples and sites associated with shamanic traditions. In the Poland Pavilion in Gwangju, visitors can see his work Shamanism 5, which is normally in a private collection. It depicts a group of shamans wearing distinctive hats (these were chosen according to the deity for whom the ritual was being performed). Other attributes are also visible – a fan and blue sashes. The figures are situated beneath a roof of ornate beams, common in palaces and temples.

Park Saekwang passed away in 1985 but lived to see his exhibition in Paris, during which he was hailed as the ‘Picasso of Korea’.

The journeys of art

I’m not sure whether the concept of slow, organic change, around which Ho Tsu Nyen has structured this year’s biennial, has attracted the interest of critics. During the press conference, journalists were mainly interested in the Taiwan Pavilion. Initially, it operated under the name of the institution that organised it, perhaps so as not to irritate China. The name was only restored following quite fierce protests by artists and curators.

‘For me, art is not limited by territory or nationality,’ Ho Tsu Nyen emphasised diplomatically. ‘Korean artists are shaped by those from other parts of the world, and vice versa. […] I want visitors to experience an encounter at the exhibition that will transform them.’

I, however, came away from the biennial with the realisation that art consists of ideas that travel through time and across cultures. Sometimes a book by a poet from the other side of the world, opened at a random page on the underground, or a city described in a book by a writer from a different culture, can open up entirely new horizons.