Gwangju Biennale should not adopt an open call for artistic director

Jeong Jun-mo

The author is a former chief curator at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea and an  exhibition director of the first Gwangju Biennale.

The Gwangju Biennale has announced that, for the first time in its 30-year history, it will select its artistic director through an open competition. Smaller biennales in Korea have increasingly embraced such systems, but for the Gwangju Biennale to join the trend is an event in itself. Although the move is presented in the name of fairness and equal opportunity, many within the cultural world fear that it marks a retreat from artistic excellence. Art is rooted less in procedural fairness than in rigorous expertise and aesthetic insight grounded in the spirit of the age.

A biennale is not merely a collection of artworks. It is an intellectual laboratory that proposes overarching ideas capable of capturing the concerns of an era. To fulfill that mission, a curator with an international network and a clear artistic vision should be entrusted with full authority over the exhibition.

An open competition, however, risks confining the selection process to quantitative evaluations and administrative procedures. Instead of encouraging experimentation and bold ideas, it may produce projects that are safe, conventional and predictable.

The role of an artistic director extends far beyond management. It involves discovering artists and weaving their works into a coherent narrative. Open recruitment may serve as a shield behind which institutions avoid the responsibility and burden of inviting exceptional figures. More troubling still is the possibility that those who wield influence during the selection process could install a nominal artistic director while exercising real power behind the scenes.

Art cannot be measured by mechanical notions of equality. The highest achievements arise from expertise, accountability and originality. There is a reason that the Venice Biennale, still regarded as the world’s leading biennale, continues to appoint its artistic directors directly and grants them broad authority once selected. The aesthetic coherence and excellence that define major exhibitions cannot easily be achieved through administrative procedures alone.

If the Gwangju Biennale hopes to avoid becoming isolated on the margins of the global art world, it must abandon what I regard as the illusion of open recruitment and restore a system that guarantees professional autonomy and curatorial responsibility.

Even more troubling is the opacity surrounding the decision itself. Since its founding, the Gwangju Biennale has grown into one of Korea’s most important cultural institutions through public support and national backing. But such a consequential change to the method of selecting an artistic director was made without even the most basic public hearings or academic forums.

The timing of the decision also raises questions. The policy was pushed ahead during the campaign period for the election of the mayor of the newly planned Gwangju-South Jeolla Special Metropolitan City, before any cultural policy for the new administrative entity had been established. The decision was made without consultation with the future city leadership. Such haste appears highly unusual and inevitably invites suspicion about the motivations behind it.

The contradiction is striking. The biennale promotes itself as a global institution, but its decision-making process remains bound by local bureaucratic habits and closed networks.

Great biennales are built on intense debate and the wisdom of experts. The latest decision has even prompted the sarcastic suggestion that the artistic director system itself be abolished and that participating artists also be selected through open competition. Warnings that internationally renowned curators may avoid applying have gone unheeded.

The notion that a global exhibition can attract masters of the field simply by opening applications, without careful risk analysis or consideration of alternative models, reflects a troubling lack of responsibility.

The value of art lies in its power to reveal profound truths about human existence and society. The choice of an artistic director should therefore begin with a more fundamental question: What meaning will the biennale leave for humanity and society? That is the standard by which art remains true to itself.

The Gwangju Biennale grew by transforming the historical trauma of Gwangju into a subject of global reflection. In that sense, the latest decision undermines the spirit of the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement that the biennale was created to honor. Sacrificing artistic excellence threatens the institution’s identity. If the foundation refuses to heed criticism from the cultural community, the Gwangju Biennale may eventually forfeit its claim to be Korea’s biennale.