The story
Gwangju Biennale in Gwangju
The Gwangju Biennale, founded in the mid-1990s partly to commemorate the 1980 Gwangju Democratization Movement, is the oldest biennial of contemporary art in Asia. Held roughly every two years, it brings artists from dozens of countries together around themes of democracy, social justice, and human rights, using contemporary art as a deliberate response to the city's history of trauma and resistance.
Gwangju carries a specific and painful chapter in modern Korean history, the 1980 democratization movement in which citizens rose up against martial law and were met with a violent military crackdown, an event that left deep scars on the city and became a defining moment in Korea's path toward democracy.