10. Gwangju Biennale
Burning Down the House, the 10th Gwangju Biennale, explores the process of burning and transformation, a cycle of obliteration and renewal witnessed throughout history. Evident in aesthetics, historical events, and an increasingly rapid course of redundancy and renewal in commercial culture, the Biennale reflects on this process of events of destruction or self-destruction? burning the home one occupies? followed by the promise of the new and the hope for change.
Burning Down the House looks at the spiral of rejection and revitalization that this process implies. The theme highlights the capacity of art to critique the establishment through an exploration that includes the visual, sound, movement and dramatic performance. At the same time, it recognises the possibility and impossibility within art to deal directly and concretely with politics. The energy, the materiality and processes of burning ? the manner in which material is changed and destroyed by flames into the residue of dramatic interventions or remnants of celebrations ? have long informed artistic practice. The transformative powers of fire are central to the way in which this exhibition has been conceived.
Gwangju Biennale