The 14th Gwangju Biennale
proposes to imagine our shared planet as a site of resistance, coexistence,
solidarity and care by thinking through the transformative and restorative
potential of water as a metaphor, a force, and a method. 《soft and weak like water》celebrates an
aqueous model of power that brings forth change, not with an immediate effect
but with endurance and pervasive gentleness, flowing across structural
divisions and differences.
Embracing contradictions and paradoxes – as “there
is nothing softer and weaker than water, and yet there is nothing better for
attacking hard and strong things” (Dao De Jing, chap.78) – the Biennale’s theme
highlights the capacity of art to permeate deep into the individual and the
collective, which enables us to navigate through the complexities of the world
with a sense of awareness and direction.
《soft and weak like water》 thus explores the subtle undercurrents and intangible forces of art
that relate to all aspects of human experience – from the emotional and
psychological to the social and political – with the hope of restoring the
fluid wholeness of here and everywhere, now and everywhen, one and everything.
This involves examination of how artists from different corners of the globe
are responding to current crises that are affecting the whole world, from the
life-threatening pandemic and deepening war and refugee crisis to reinforced
racism and climate catastrophes.
The Biennale will underscore how these
responses encourage diverse and multifaceted actions on a transnational level.
It aspires to understand seemingly disparate yet equally urgent global issues
as one entanglement that affects the whole planet and its inhabitants; problem
which require shared planetary vision.
A perspective that transcends national
or regional boundaries, and diverse and at times opposing values, is necessary
in contemplating the common future of humanity. By employing a relational
cosmology that privileges change, fluidity and indeterminacy as a lens to view
current crises and corresponding artistic practice, the Biennale intends to
present the planet as a shared, interconnected, borderless space intertwined
with the time before and after the Anthropocene.
The 14th Gwangju Biennale
embraces the city of Gwangju as the origin and source of the ‘Gwangju spirit’,
which is already implicated in multiplicity. The city became a sacred symbol of
democracy, resistance and justice after the ‘Gwangju Uprising’ of 1980 (also
known as ‘Gwangju Democratization Movement’). The denial and suppression that
continued in the following years by the paramilitary regime did not dampen the
city’s efforts in launching a major international art biennial in 1995 to
remember and honour the sacrifice of their citizens.
Posing a question “What
does it mean to think of Gwangju as not only a geography or locality, but a
paradigm, a manual, an epistemological framework?”, Soft and weak like water
seeks to reinterpret the wave of change the city and its people generated
through contemporary art. The opportunity to think through and with the city of
Gwangju could expand our perspective beyond the binary structure of a
geographical centre and a periphery, encouraging us to understand the world as
the cumulative effect of transnational intersections and connections
distributed across time and space.
Another key aim of the Biennale
is to address Gwangju’s historic identification as ‘Yehyang (藝鄕, a region of art and culture)’, renowned for its calligraphy, ink
painting, pansori, lacquerware and other traditional arts and crafts. Combined
with extensively practiced philosophical and behavioural teachings of Buddhism,
Confucianism and Daoism (which value the negation of desire, high ethical
standards and non-action as a way of nature respectively), the city’s strong
tradition of artistic practice and sensibility could be surfaced and understood
in connection with ancestral teachings present in other cultures.
By drawing
inspiration from the artistic and cultural roots of Gwangju, Soft and weak like
water intends to show the city’s transcultural resonance with what might appear
to be remote and unrelated, such as Latin American indigenous cultures, South
Pacific cosmology, North African poetics, and cultural legacies of the trading
routes in Indian Ocean and Central Asia.
What emerges through these
imaginative intersections is an interconnected, planetary vision of ourselves
in relation to one another and what is beyond us, highlighting fluid
connections between traditions and cultures across geopolitical boundaries. It
is hoped that such a vision will enable us to critically re-evaluate the
existing structures of knowledge which were predominantly shaped by modernist,
often Western, colonial perspectives, and demonstrate how another system of
knowledge is possible: one of ancestral and indigenous knowledge rooted in
respective histories and cultural identities. We are invited to learn how to
exist together in our differences, to find solidarity in both our affinities
and our singularities.
