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Ho Tzu Nyen Wants the Gwangju Biennale to Honor the Past, Not Relive It

While the artist-director respects the biennial's ongoing commitment to remembering the city’s political history, he is wary of simply repeating its trauma and aims to "take these histories, break the cycle and convert this energy into something positive."

The Gwangju Biennale is not only one of the oldest and most important biennales in Asia, but also an example of a context-specific art event deeply rooted in the history of its place of origin. Behind the biennial’s 16th edition, opening September 5, is Ho Tzu Nyen, a world-renowned Singaporean artist and a regular presence himself on the biennale circuit, who, together with curators Che Kyongfa, Park Gahee and Brian Kuan Wood, selected 43 artists and groups from around the world to participate.

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When Ho Tzu Nyen was invited to submit a proposal for the 16th Gwangju Biennale, he immediately agreed, drawn by the city’s singular political history and the significance of the May 18 Democratic Uprising. “Looking at recent history and what we are going through around the world, where we see democratic systems being continuously subverted, all of these situations pushed me toward saying yes,” he told Observer during Art Basel Hong Kong.

For Ho, what happened in Gwangju in 1980 cannot be understood solely as a Korean event; it was also deeply significant for Asia. “What was unique about the Gwangju Uprising was that it was a horizontal uprising that an elite group did not lead,” he explained. During the 1980s, similar movements emerged across Asia. In Taiwan and Myanmar there were comparable uprisings from below, as well as the major uprising in the Philippines, now officially referred to as the People Power movement, which overthrew Marcos. At the tail end of the 1980s came Tiananmen. “One could say that this decade of horizontal uprisings in Asia began with Gwangju and ended with Tiananmen,” he added.

"The Gwangju Biennale: You Must Change Your Life" Venue: The Gwangju Exhibition Hall, with parallel national pavilions and satellite projects across the city Dates: September 5 - November 15, 2026 Curators: Che Kyongfa, Park Gahee and Brian Kuan Wood

He first immersed himself in this history in 2020, when he participated in that year’s Gwangju Biennale and was commissioned to make a work marking the uprising’s 40th anniversary. That experience became an important foundation for his approach to the forthcoming edition, titled “You Must Change Your Life.” Drawn from the final line of Rainer Maria Rilke’s 1908 poem Archaic Torso of Apollo, the title becomes a resonant call today, given the current state of the world. The biennale envisioned by Tzu Nyen aims to become a platform for social practice and collective healing, approaching change as an........

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