스킵네비게이션

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• Organized by the Busan Biennale Organizing Committee every two years, Sea Art Festival, is a distinctive outdoor art exhibition that interprets the ocean as an artistic venue through commissioned site-specific installations.
• UK-based Greek curator Irini Papadimitriou is named Artistic Director
• This year’s festival takes the title Flickering Shores, Sea Imaginaries（깜빡이는해안, 상상하는바다）.
• The 2023 edition will take place October 14 to November 19 at Ilgwang Beach, Gijang, Busan, South Korea.

Busan Metropolitan City and the Busan Biennale Organizing Committee are pleased to announce details of Sea Art Festival 2023 taking place from October 14 to November 19 at Ilgwang Beach, Gijang, Bussan, South Korea. UK-based Greek curator, Irini Papadimitriou takes the helm as this year’s Artistic Director under the title Flickering Shores, Sea Imaginaries.

 

 

 Irini Papadimitriou ©RichardTymon

 

The 2023 program overseen by Europe-based curator Irini Papadimitriou

Irini Papadimitriou (1975) has a BA in Conservation and Diploma in Museum Studies in Italy, an MA in Aesthetics and Art history from Middlesex University, and an MA in Creative Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London.

 

Having grown up in a family that works in the marine industry in Greece, Papadimitriou has always drawn great inspiration from the sea. With interests stemming from her childhood, her artistic and academic studies of marine issues include matters related to exploitation, sea pollution, and seasteading.

 

Based in Europe, Papadimitriou is currently creative director of Future Everything, a non-profit organization dedicated to researching key topics in the digital era, including technology, society, and cultural convergence in the past two decades. Through community networking and various events, Future Everything brings together artists, curators, developers, programmers, urban planners, policymakers, and more, supporting them in their new endeavors and joint projects.

 

As Digital Programmes Manager for London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) from 2008 to 2018, the world’s largest museum of decorative arts and design, Papadimitriou oversaw V&A’s Digital Design Weekend Festival. It is renowned for a collection spanning multiple eras, regions, styles, and genres, as well as its historical documentation and preservation activities and an exhibition planning approach that reflects contemporary trends and transformations.

 

 

 

Flickering Shores, Sea Imaginaries

The theme for this year’s edition of Sea Art Festival is Flickering Shores, Sea Imaginaries. ‘Flickering Shores’ denotes the concurrent fragility and beauty of our shores and coastal sites. The sea “flickers” in an irregular manner, plagued by a number of issues associated with cruise tourism, wind power, deep-sea mining, overfishing, nuclear testing, rising water levels, and pollution.

 

‘Sea Imaginaries’ stands as an approach for adopting common values and actions towards alternative future visions of the sea and coastal cities, places, or communities.

 

The sea is a vital source for our survival, but in our contemporary capitalist society, it is also a vast industry we depend on and exploit in many ways. The sea provides us with valuable resources; a source of food, jobs, energy, minerals, medicines, goods, and services, but it is also a host for our vast internet data travelling through undersea cables, a site for trading routes, travel, cross-cultural exchange, and migration. The sea has always been central to many industries and world economies.

 

At the same time, human activities and interference – advanced deep-sea development, extractionism, unknown risks –  have been causing the fast acidification and warming of waters, threatening the health of our oceans and the survival of marine life and creating catastrophic consequences for our planet. At this point, the relationship between creatures and the sea must be urgently reconsidered and evaluated.

 

The Sea Art Festival 2023 attempts to look at the reality of our relationship with the sea in a new way, while generating inclusive, creative, and innovative ideas rooted in symbiosis and collectiveness. It also aims to explore the roles of coastal cities and communities as an interconnected global network and considers the sea’s recovery and the potential therein. In essence, this year’s Sea Art Festival is an invitation to reimagine our relationship to the sea, its species, and its environment by way of culture and art.

 

Academic Program – Sea Art Festival Lab

In addition to its anchor exhibition, this year also presents Sea Art Festival Lab bringing together not only the local community, schools, and other educational institutions but also members of the artistic community as well as researchers and viewers with an interest in the sea.

 

This program is a space for research and creative work on explorations of the sea, art, and science. Its aim is to serve as a base linking art and cultural institutions with the marine ecosystem. Major components include a symposium and workshop, which provide forums for presenting and discussing explorations of an alternative future in coexistence with the sea, along with screenings of film-based works reflecting the topic.

 

Artistic director, Irini Papadimitriou, explains, “Art is a great force for changing our attitudes and perspectives. Our hope here is to connect fields such as art, research, industry, and marine science in order to open up new possibilities.”

 

A 37-day festival that celebrates Busan’s coastline as a source of inspiration

Taking place over a 37-day period from October 14 to November 19, this year’s Sea Art Festival features an exhibition of work by around 30 Korean and international artists in Busan’s Ilgwang Beach. Previously used as the exhibition setting for the 2021 edition, Ilgwang is renowned for its superb scenery, as reflected by its inclusion as one of eight scenic sites in Gijang County and is frequented by many visitors. The 2023 exhibition is also poised to infuse vitality into the region through the use of various idle spaces as indoor gallery settings.

The festival’s organizing committee is making every possible effort to deliver its strongest ever iteration as it expects a record of visitors from the nearby regions of Busan, Ulsan, and the South Gyeongsang area thanks to increased activity at the nearby East Busan Tourism Complex and the full opening of the Donghae Railway line to Ulsan’s Taehwagang Station.

 

Further details of the artist list and presentation to be announced in due course.

 

Dates: October 14 – November 19, 2023

Venue: Ilgwang Beach, Busan, South Korea

 

Press enquiries

Renee Chan | Sutton | renee@suttoncomms.com

 

 

 

NOTES TO EDITORS

 

About Sea Art Festival

The Sea Art Festival is one of the most seminal and accessible art exhibitions in South Korea, organized by the Busan Biennale Organizing Committee every two years. Sea Art Festival pursues a friendly yet distinctive outdoor art exhibition which interprets the ocean – a representative locality of Busan – as an artistic venue. Initially conceived in 1987 as one of the Pre-Olympic cultural events of the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, Sea Art Festival continues to connect the public with the ecological surroundings via commissioned site-specific installations in its current form since 2011.

 

About the Busan Biennale Organizing Committee

The Busan Biennale Organizing Committee was first established in 1999 as Busan International Art Festival Organizing Committee and changed its name in 2001 as 'Busan Biennale'. Through staging Busan Biennale every even-numbered year and the Sea Art Festival every odd-numbered year, the organizing committee presents resonating site-specific artworks that are inspired by the identity and local characteristics of the city, striving to promote Korean art and culture to the global audience whilst introducing the canons of international art to local audiences.

 

Inaugurated in 1981 as Busan Youth Biennale formed by young Korean artists, Busan Biennale has become a leading art biennale in Korea and beyond. The main notions that Busan Biennale conveys are locality, internationality and communicability by reflecting on local lives and culture that feed into the overarching theme of each edition.