2009-08-06
2nd INTERNATIONAL WOMEN ARTISTS BIENNALE, INCHEON 2009
Jung-Ah Woo

Hong Ji-yoon, Minstrel, romance, and Fantasy at Wonhyoro and Cheongpadong, 2007, colored ink painting on korean paper, video, 00:03:15, variable. Courtesy of the Artist

The 2nd International Incheon Women Artists Biennale (IWAB) which opens in early August will present three exhibitions, along with a series of artists’ performances, an academic symposium and various other educational programs. The main exhibition, “So Close Yet So Far Away” (Commissioner: Eunhee Yang; Curators: Thalia Vrachopoulos and Sutthirat Supaparinya) is dedicated to the achievements of 100 contemporary women artists from Korea and abroad. The Tuning exhibition, entitled “The 21st Century, The Feminine Century”, and the “Century of Diversity and Hope” (Commissioner: Heng-Gil Han), invites both male and female artists to explore human subjectivity from feminist perspectives. The Participation exhibition, “Alone Together” (Commissioner: Jung-Sook Oh), consists of a collection of solo shows featuring Korean women artists who have supported the IWAB since its inception. The series of artists’ performances, which will run throughout the exhibition period, will begin on opening day with interactive pieces by Pinaree Sanpitak, Kim Eunmi and Chae Song Wha. On August 2, at the International Symposium, scholars and critics will examine the current condition of feminism, and artists will present their lived experiences in the ‘Post- Feminist’ era of the 21st century.
The Incheon Women Artists Biennale Organizing Committee (IWABOC) was developed by the Incheon Women Artists Association (IWAA). Responding to a collective demand for greater promotion of the activities of local women artists, IWAA organized an annual exhibition for its members in the 1980s. This annual show evolved into the Incheon Women Artists Biennale in 2004, the success of which encouraged the association to expand the event into an international women artists festival. After the Pre-IWAB of 2006, the IWABOC realized its first international exhibition in 2007, an event which encompassed the diverse activities of global women artists, both established and emerging. While IWABOC’s primary aim is to “advocate and promote all women artists creative endeavors without prejudice,” the IWAB envisions that femininity, or the ultimate ‘otherness,’ could serve as a “catalyst for communication between different genders,” and a “bridge between the international art community and local artists”.
The main exhibitions will take place at the Incheon Art Platform within the Warehouse Complex, which is located at Haean-dong, Jung-gu, in Incheon. The complex is within the former Japanese concession which was established in the late 19th century, or the ‘open port period’. Thirteen historic buildings from the open port period are still standing in the district, and were recently designated as official cultural properties. Following their restoration, seven of these buildings, including the Daeheung Corporation (built in 1886: Cultural Property No. 248), the Korea Express Co., Ltd. warehouse (built in 1948), the Samwoo Printing Company (built in 1942), and the Daejin Sangsa Company buildings (built in 1948), will be transformed into the Incheon Art Platform. IWAB is proud to be the Art Platform’s opening event, and after this year’s biennale, the site will serve as a cultural complex for the community, equipped with art galleries, educational facilities, performance halls, a commercial area, and residencies available to both domestic and international artists.
From the beginning of the Platform project, commissioner Dr. Eunhee Yang was very attentive to the site’s specific history. Since the opening of the Incheon International Airport in 2001, the city of Incheon, a one-hour drive from Seoul, has served as the ultra-modern gateway of Korea. By initiating a series of systematic development plans, the city has begun to transform itself into a multi-functional industrial, economic and cultural hub. Yet, alongside this movement toward modernization, Incheon’s older districts retain vanishing traces of pre-modern Korea, as it was in the time before the nation first opened its Incheon seaport to the outer world in the nineteenth century, reluctantly abandoning its centuries-old policy of seclusion. It is essential to note that the open port period, which literally marked the opening of Korea’s turbulent modern history, was not a voluntary transition, but a change dictated by world powers, which ultimately led to the country’s colonization by Imperial Japan from 1910 to 1945. The historical context of the site, which contains both the prospect of the future and a retrospective on the past, is clearly reflected in the theme of the main exhibition, “So Close Yet So Far Away”, which addresses the perception of space and the conflicts surrounding borders in the age of globalization. Along with several site-specific projects, Yang commissioned works that demonstrate how contemporary women artists conceive psychological and physical space within their works; how they negotiate their place within private and public spaces; how they struggle to realize their dreams and visions within political and cultural realms; and how the individual and collective conditions of women’s existence around the world intercept.
“So Close Yet So Far Away” is divided into three subsections: “Personal Territory, Fluid Interior, and Contested Space”. “Personal Territory” consists of an archive project, which requires the participating artists to submit artworks and documents which display their daily concerns as generated by their professional, personal, and social experiences. As an ongoing project, these collected materials will be developed into the Women Artists Archive. “Fluid Interior” focuses on the inner world of female artists: the unimpeded flow of consciousness, the rapid leap of imagination, and the sources of their psychic anxieties. The artists’ formal language ranges from surrealist imagery to purely abstract materials. “Contested Space” refers to outer reality, where contemporary women constantly face myriad conflicts and crises. One may call this ‘outer reality’ an arena for power games between different individuals, communities, genders, cultures, religions and nations. Thus, the historic district of Incheon’s open port period, the site which marks the conflict between differences formed at crucial moments of Korea’s modernization, Westernization, and colonization, provides an impeccable conceptual ground for the thematic concern of the entire program.
The Tuning exhibition, consisting of “The 21st Century, The Feminine Century: Century of Diversity and Hope”, provides an optimistic perspective on the future: “the 21st century as feminine, diverse, and free of any political, racial or sexual oppression”. ‘Feminine’ here does not necessarily serve as a gender-specific adjective, referring instead to an alternative mind-set and world view which transcends the conventional orders and hierarchical value systems that have been dominated by the patriarchal society. By inviting both male and female artists, the exhibition aims to initiate discussion with regards to current human conditions from various ‘feminist’ perspectives. “Alone Together”, which will be held at the Incheon Educational and Cultural Center for Students, consists of single exhibition booths showcasing individual artists, yet these individual displays will be incorporated into a collective statement of support for the goals of IWAB. The entire Biennale pursues a hybrid format which seeks to integrate a multitude of artworks, catalogs, texts, films, performances, and discussions in order to provide a multidimensional and multidisciplinary experience. Additional venues will include the social club for foreign diplomats, the meteorological observatory, and Jayu Park (Freedom Park), which is the first Western-style public park in Korea.
Why do we need a ‘women’s biennale’ at this moment of time, when the tide of feminism, as both an activist movement and a social theory, seems to have diminished and dispersed? Yang stated that “feminism” is by no means a unitary, consistent framework capable of encompassing the diverse histories and phenomena of women’s art around the globe. In Korea, she continued, the feminist art movement was traditionally incorporated under a sub-category of Minjung Misul, or the People’s Art movement, a kind of social realism that burgeoned as a political protest against the military regime in the 1980s. But although Minjung Misul asserted radical politics, its gender stance was not far removed from patriarchal conventions. Korean women artists had to wait until the late 1990s in order to pursue their individual concerns and sensibilities outside of the collective political charges and demands. As Yang said, feminism as a discursive trend may sound old-fashioned, but the questions posed by feminism are by no means outdated. IWAB will provide a multi-faceted site for addressing the renewed questions and challenges faced by women artists from around the world.