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Controversies over the Incheon Women Artists' Biennale

Kim Hyeonjoo 1

1추계예술대학교

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ABSTRACT

The (International) Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale was held by the joint organization of the City of Incheon and the Biennale Organizing Committee from 2007 to 2011. It originated from a local group exhibition by the Incheon Women Artists’ Association in 2004, and the local project was developed into the international sphere through the Pre-International Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale in 2006. The structure of the Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale consists of three sections. The Main Exhibition invites women artists from the world and the Tuning Exhibition includes selected works of both female and male artists around the world. The Participation Exhibition not only features works of established women artists in Korea, but provides one-person shows to the local women artists who have few opportunities to show their works, in return to their financial support of the Biennale. While it was described by an art magazine as the world’s first and only international biennale solely devoted to women’s art, there were constant controversies concerning the Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale. In consequence, the City of Incheon decided to withdraw any engagement in the Biennale from 2013. Rather than evaluation of the exhibitions, disputes converged into the identity of the Biennale Organizing Committee,and how women’s art legitimately could represent the City of Incheon which had been rapidly rising as an economic and cultural hub of East Asia. In this paper, I attempted to explore the Biennale as a sign in order to grasp the essence of controversies. It was a sign in which diverse voices and positions of different interest groups were in conflict with each other, or even remained in silence: Some males,with a radical inclination who were concerned in local art world, severely criticized the conservative attitudes of the leading members of the Biennale Organizing Committee,their poor knowledge on feminist art and contemporary art, and eventually the legitimacy of women’s art for the city; conservative males, from the local as well as the cultural center of metropolitan city of Seoul, supported the Committee practically and emotionally; many feminists, who had led feminist arts in Korea, tried not to speak out their opinions on the Biennale. They opposed the Biennale by keeping in silence. By investigating the Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale as a sign full with conflicting voices, I could partly uncover the problems of cultural politics involved in biennales proliferating in recent years in Korea.

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