13th Gwangju Biennale Maps a Multiverse

By Sujin Jung

Exhibition view: Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, 13th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (1 April–9 May 2021). Courtesy Gwangju Biennale Foundation. Photo: Sang tae Kim.

Postponed twice due to Covid-19, the 13th Gwangju Biennale, Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning (1 April–9 May 2021) has finally opened with around 450 artworks by 69 artists, including 40 new commissions.

Directed by Defne Ayas and Natasha Ginwala, the exhibition gathers a multitude of spiritual and technological perspectives that encompass ancestral, feminist, queer, indigenous, and shamanist theories and practices while addressing discourses on new technologies such as neural networks and deep learning.

Though the exhibition period has been halved, the scale of the Biennale has expanded. Alongside the international programmes of the Gwangju Biennale Commission and Pavilion Projects and collateral exhibition MaytoDay, the Biennale is presented across eight venues in Gwangju, and extended through online programmes.

The main exhibition, Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, is staged across the Gwangju Biennale Exhibition Hall, Gwangju National Museum, Gwangju Theater, and Horanggasy Artpolygon, presenting eight different themes in each platform to form one continuous narrative....READ MORE