The Gwangju Biennale Foundation today announced the 43 participating artists and groups selected for the 16th Gwangju Biennale.
 
The roster, selected by Artistic Director Ho Tzu Nyen together with curators Park Gahee, Brian Kuan Wood, and Che Kyongfa, brings together voices from diverse generations and regions. Through their sustained artistic practices, the participating artists explore how new possibilities and ways of living emerge and take shape.
 
This edition of the Biennale approaches transformation as an ongoing process of practice through which bodies and modes of perception are continually reconfigured. While change often becomes most visible in moments of rupture and crisis, it also unfolds through the gradual accumulation of everyday actions and experiences.
 
In this process, individuals are shaped by their encounters with others, expanding the possibilities for transformation through mutual influence and exchange.
 
Artistic Director Ho Tzu Nyen stated, “We envision this Biennale as a space of encounter and solidarity, where practices and experiments taking place across different scales and fields can come together to engage in dialogue, raise questions, and, above all, amplify one another’s voices.”

The exhibition unfolds as a journey across multiple scales, ranging from the molecular to the cosmic. From intimate gestures and familiar bonds to social relations and resonances that traverse different worlds, the participating artists approach the question of transformation in distinct ways.
 
From the molecular poetics found in the work of Nina Canell, to the existential weight of post-socialist life embedded in the paintings of Wang Jiahao, and the Sufi-inflected transcendence evoked through breath, movement, and repetition in the work of Rafik Greiss, these practices explore new ways of sensing and inhabiting relationships between bodies, histories, and others.
 
Techniques of transformation and self-transformation also emerge through the artists’ performative practices. Tehching Hsieh and Amanda Heng have long treated life itself as an artistic medium, sustaining practices grounded in repetition, discipline, and concentration. Their works reshape perception and propose new ways of experiencing and living through time.

The works of A K Dolven, Matthew Barney, Geumhyung Jeong, and Angela Goh examine the body as a site of continual becoming through processes of affirmation and restraint, estrangement and reconstruction.
 
Meanwhile, the work of Mona Benyamin takes the family itself as an unfamiliar object of inquiry, reconsidering and reimagining the meaning of intimacy within a world marked by political injustice, precarity, and absurdity.
 
Following the journey of Rim Dongsik, who has long sought new ways of living alongside nature, visitors will encounter natural artist Woo Pyongnam (Jongsun). Nearby, they will also encounter Chunseol Tea (Spring Snow Tea), cultivated by Heo Baekryeon, a master of Southern School literati painting who founded the Gwangju Agricultural High Technical School in 1947 and devoted his life to bringing together art, agriculture, nature, and education.
 
For Christian Nyampeta, the body is activated through its relations with other bodies, amplifying collective capacities through shared learning and solidarity.
 
In the work of Kiri Dalena, the body moves across boundaries—from the molecular individual to the family unit, and further into the collective body of people gathered in protest. In the visions of Saodat Ismailova and Sohrab Hura, the body ultimately begins to resonate with other worlds beyond itself. 

In bringing together practices that span a wide range of scales and intensities, this edition of the Biennale proposes artistic practice itself as a process of cultivating the capacity to sense, endure, relate, imagine, and ultimately generate change. Art emerges here as a practice of repetition and discipline through which such capacities are continually tested, renewed, and reinvented.
 
The Biennale approaches Gwangju not merely as a site for exhibition, but as a city where artistic practice, collective action, and political transformation have long been inseparably intertwined. Gwangju carries a history of creatively transforming conditions of oppression and crisis, and that experience continues to resonate as a living reality in the present.
 
In this context, the 16th Gwangju Biennale noted the significance of presenting works by the mothers of the May Mothers House as part of the exhibition. Their paintings embody resilience, persistence, and creativity, and the Biennale regards the opportunity to share these qualities with visitors as especially meaningful.

Participating artists
 
Matthew Barney, Jean Barth, James Benning, Mona Benyamin, Rossella Biscotti, CAMP, Nina Canell, Lygia Clark, Kiri Dalena & Ben Brix, A K Dolven, İnci Eviner, Angela Goh, Goldin+Senneby, Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, Rafik Greiss, Amanda Heng, Heo Baekryeon (Gwangju Agricultural Technical High School), James T. Hong, Tehching Hsieh, Sohrab Hura, Saodat Ismailova, Volcanoes of Jeju (Jeju Stone Park), Jeong Geumhyung, E Roon Kang, Sunik Kim, Július Koller, Daisuke Kosugi, Kwon Byungjun and Park Chan-kyong, Lu Yang, May Mothers House, Melvin Moti, Nam Hwayeon, Christian Nyampeta, Bhenji Ra, Rim Dong Sik and Nature Artist Woo Pyongnam (Jongsun), Ryu Hankil, Sasaki Ken, Suzuki Akio, Ullimsanbang (Huh Ryeon, Huh Hyeong, Huh Geon, Huh Lim, Huh Moon, Hur Jin), Wang Jiahao, Wang Tuo, Maya Watanabe

References

• 광주비엔날레 보도자료 (Gwangju Biennale Press Release)