The Busan Biennale Organizing Committee announces the opening of Busan Biennale 2026, 《Dissident Chorus》, which will take place from 29 August to 1 November 2026 across Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, Space OneZ and Former Busan Nam High School.
 
Bringing together 46 Artists/Teams from 22 countries, the exhibition spans installation, sound, performance, moving image, sculpture and other media.
 
Co-Artistic Directors Evelyn Simons and Amal Khalaf, selected through an international open call that attracted more than 70 applications, have developed the exhibition through their respective practices across contemporary art, performance, sound and community-based work.
 
Sound, bodies and gathering as tools for connection and resistance
 
《Dissident Chorus》 explores how different bodies and voices can come into relation through sound. Across the three venues, audiences encounter practices that consider how sound gathers people, carries memory, and has historically generated forms of resistance and solidarity.
 
At a time when public language is often emptied out through repetition or softened until it conceals violence, 《Dissident Chorus》 turns instead to sound, song and embodied expression: to breath, rhythm and the simple act of gathering.

Artists from different geographical and cultural contexts respond to these questions through their own approaches to sound, bodies, labour, movement and memory, taking Busan itself as an active context for the exhibition.
 
Aliaskar Abarkas, based between Iran and the UK, presents the site-specific work Spell, connecting the schoolyard of Former Busan Nam High School with Busan Museum of Contemporary Art.
 
Across the schoolyard, recycled textiles in three tonal variations unfold like an expansive musical score. Visitors move across geometric patterns, symbols and motifs associated with protection, encountering the work through their own movement across the site.
 
Busan-based artist Hyunsung Park transforms the former cafeteria of Former Busan Nam High School through blue light, sculpture and sound. Tubes and lighting follow the old pipes and architecture of the space, while sculptural forms resembling marine organisms turn the disused cafeteria into an unfamiliar underwater landscape.
 
At Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, renowned science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin and artist collective 5D (Sammy Lee, Mark Lowe, Sarah Shin) present Festival, an installation developed from Le Guin’s original maps and drawings. Deep-blue maps, two towers, moving image and textiles come together in an environment that extends Le Guin’s mapmaking into a shared process of world-building.

Julien Creuzet, the Martinique-born artist who represented France at the 2024 Venice Biennale, presents an installation bringing together sculpture, moving image, poetry and sound, tracing histories of memory, migration and resistance across the Atlantic, including through the legacy of Zumbi dos Palmares, the historic anti-colonial resistance leader in Brazil.
 
Filipino artist Joar Songcuya draws on his experience as a seafarer to translate memories of life and labour at sea into painting, drawing and sound. Presented across Busan Museum of Contemporary Art and Space OneZ, his ongoing ‘Seamanship Project’ comprises more than 100 paintings recording people encountered at sea and scenes of labour on deck.
 
Some of Songcuya’s drawings have also been adapted into transportation card designs in collaboration with Busan Transportation Corporation, extending the project into the everyday movements of visitors and residents across the city.
 
Mongolian artist Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar takes over a former classroom at Former Busan Nam High School. Fourteen chair-like sculptures made from wood, metal, synthetic fur and materials collected in Mongolia occupy the grey classroom as if awaiting students.
 
Chairs sourced from an outdoor market in Ulaanbaatar and field recordings from the site bring everyday rhythms into the room, turning the classroom into a space where traces of memory, labour and learning coexist.

Performances and programmes extend Dissident Chorus beyond the exhibition space
 
Public programmes form an integral part of Busan Biennale 2026. From the opening weekend through the closing of the Biennale, performances unfold across Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, Former Busan Nam High School, Eulsukdo Cultural Center, Gadeokdo and the waters of Busan.
 
Workshops, talks and radio programmes invite artists and audiences to listen, converse and generate new rhythms together.
 
In October, Eunji Cho’s street parade will travel from the Cheonghak Pier Area to Former Busan Nam High School, joined by the Dadaepo Hurisori Preservation Association and art spaces and cultural practitioners based in Busan.
 
Further programme include Lee Dong-Keun’s Gadeokdo Birdsong Music Festival, which brings participants together to listen to the natural sounds of Gadeokdo and create a collective sound work, and Joon Yoo’s noise score, a participatory workshop for children aged four to six at Busan Museum of Contemporary Art.
 
Throughout the Biennale, Radio Revolution will present DJ mixes, live broadcasts, interviews, conversations and podcasts with participating artists and musicians, extending the exhibition’s concerns to audiences beyond the venues.
 
During Frieze Seoul, Busan Biennale × Frieze Film Seoul 2026 will take place at SONGEUN in Seoul, presenting moving-image works by artists participating in Busan Biennale 2026 and extending the curatorial concerns of Dissident Chorus into the city.
 
Further programmes details and registration information are available via the official Busan Biennale 2026 website(https://busanbiennale2026.com/).

References

• 부산비엔날레조직위원회 보도자료 (Busan Biennale Organizing Committee Press Release)