13th Gwangju Biennale Opens

Image courtesy of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation.

13th Gwangju Biennale
Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning
April 1, 2021 – May 9, 2021
https://13thgwangjubiennale.org

The 13th Gwangju Biennale, Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, opens on 1 April 2021 with 69 participating artists and 40 new commissions, in Gwangju, South Korea.

Founded in 1995 in memory of the civil uprising and the 1980 Gwangju Democratisation Movement, the Gwangju Biennale is Asia’s oldest and most prestigious biennale of contemporary art.  Directed by Defne Ayas and Natasha Ginwala, the 13th edition, Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, sets out to examine the spectrum of the extended mind through artistic and theoretical means. The exhibition delves into a broad set of cosmologies, activating multitudinous forms of intelligence, planetary life-systems and modes of communal survival, as they contend with the future horizon of cognitive capitalism, algorithmic violence and planetary imperialisms. Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning encompasses an exhibition across four venues, with 69 artists; an online publishing platform and journal, Minds Rising; three publications, including a Feminism(s) reader, titled Stronger than Bone; and a series of online public programs bringing together artists, activists, scholars and systems thinkers: GB Talks|Rising to the Surface: Practicing Solidarity Futures, Augmented Minds and the Incomputable, and an adaptive procession with live commissions: Through the Gates.

The Artistic Directors, Defne Ayas and Natasha Ginwala, said: “With grit and perseverance, in the company of so many artists and thinkers, we are grateful to have manifested an expanded biennale programme addressing living processes — aesthetic, high-spirited, historically conscious and, as such, ever-more inclusive — one that is also shaped by the current global conditions of grief, alienation and systemic breakdown. With several new artistic works and visions that unleash vocabularies of resilience, dissent and renewal, we strive to understand past and future life forms, as well as aspects of organic and machinic intelligence shaped by feminist knowledge and pursuant of racial justice. Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning assembles and channels these modes of spherical thinking towards a world ethic that is socially and ecologically desirable, despite the pervasive tentacles of militarism and authoritarianism globally. Safeguarding this journey with everyday attention to the process has been an uphill challenge, but also a privilege and an honour.”

During the same period as the 13th Gwangju Biennale, Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, the following exhibitions will also be taking place: the Gwangju Biennale Commission (GB Commission) which seeks to explore the history, architectural artifacts, traditions, memories and civil spirit of the city of Gwangju and the origin of the Gwangju Biennale; the Pavilion Project which hosts leading international art institutions connecting the Gwangju region to a wider international arts community; and MaytoDay, the May 18 Democratization Movement Special Exhibition.

Full information on these projects can be found here.