The Gwangju Biennale in South Korea, one of the most prominent art exhibitions in Asia, was engulfed by politics on Thursday as China announced a boycott of the event over a Taiwanese exhibition.
The controversy erupted from the biennale’s Pavilion Project, which is separate from the main exhibition and is being curated by international artists and galleries. The entry from Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy that China considers its territory, was slated to be shown under the title “Taiwan Pavilion.”
“Because the biennale organizers used an incorrect designation for the participation of China’s Taiwan region, allowing political factors to interfere with art, the Chinese curatorial team finds this unacceptable and has unanimously decided to withdraw from the exhibition in strong protest,” Ruan Yuelai, a curator for the “China Pavilion,” said at a news conference on Thursday.
The episode threatened to grow into a diplomatic rift. The Chinese Embassy in Seoul criticized the move as “directly damaging the political foundation of China-South Korea relations.”
China is South Korea’s largest trading partner and has close ties with North Korea, which has been increasingly belligerent toward the South. Since taking office last year, the South Korean president, Lee Jae Myung, has been trying to improve ties with Beijing in an effort to reverse the hard-line stance of his predecessor.
South Korea, like the United States, follows a “one China” policy. As part of this, it acknowledges China’s belief that Taiwan is part of China but maintains informal ties with Taiwan’s government. On Thursday, a spokesman for South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said that its policy toward Taiwan had not changed and noted that the biennale dispute had its roots in the private sector.
The Gwangju Biennale started in 1994 and attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. This year’s edition, the 16th, runs from Saturday through mid-November and is titled “You Must Change Your Life.”
The city of Gwangju was the site of an uprising in 1980 and an ensuing massacre, ordered by the country’s military dictator. These events were pivotal to South Korea’s transformation into a democracy. The biennale was established with the goals of healing the wounds of the tragedy and portraying artwork with themes of democracy, human rights and peace.
One of the first public signs of discord came in June, when the biennale’s organizers, seemingly under pressure from Chinese participants, changed the name of the “Taiwan Pavilion” to “NTMoFA Pavilion,” a reference to the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.
But they reversed themselves last month after criticism from dozens of artists participating in the biennale and from the Taiwanese culture ministry.
On Thursday, the participants of the “China Pavilion” took down their works, according to a spokeswoman for the biennale. Several Chinese artists and curators did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
A day earlier, the Gwangju Biennale Foundation issued a statement in which it apologized for causing concern and confusion and took “full responsibility for the escalation of controversy.”
It added that it hoped that the biennale would “fulfill the Pavilion Project’s original purpose: fostering meaningful artistic exchange and dialogue across borders.”
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