The Sea Art Festival 2015 is being held for 30 days from September 19 to October 18 at Dadaepo Beach.
The Busan Biennale Organizing Committee has completed its installation of art works and is ready to welcome visitors with various festival events.
The contemporary art festival, covering a variety of genres with 34 artworks from 16 countries
Artistic Director Sung-Ho Kim has invited each artist to display art works under the same roof. Under the theme See—Sea & Seed, the director designed Dadaepo Beach into four sections: Scattering Seeds, Germinating Seeds, Growing Seeds, and Growing Sea.
The festival consists of a main exhibition and a special exhibition with the Grand Kites installation performance. The festival tells a story how planted seeds of arts are germinated into an artistic field under the idea of “natural growth.” 34 artworks of artists or teams from 16 countries have participated in the festival. The artworks cover various genres of contemporary art unlike other sea art festivals to provide diverse attractions to enjoy.
Famous Korean domestic artists are also participating in the festival. The world-class media artist Lee-Nam Lee reflects lasers on the ridge of Molundae, while Young-Won Kim’s 8-meter-long sculpture welcomes visitors at the center of the beach. Myoung-Ho Lee has installed canvases behind rocks in the sea, and Duck-Hyun Cho is doing performance based on animism in the transformed space of Dadaepo.
Participatory art works and communication with visitors by performances
The Sea Art Festival 2015 gives visitors a unique chance to enjoy the arts with participatory artworks. A number of participatory artworks, including Wish Tree by Yoko Ono, will be at the festival. In Andy Dewantoro’s One Hundred People, visitors are engaged by photographs of themselves, and in Butterflies, a painting performance by Sun Choi, visitors blow paints on an empty canvas. The participatory artworks invite visitors to communicate with the arts. Artists’ performances will also make the festival be more lively than ever. Duck-Hyun Cho will play an excavation performance through his artwork Visible Invisibility. Jong-Kyun Lee plays a participatory performance, giving visitors an opportunity to be part of the artwork by lifting mesh bags for themselves.
A cultural festival amidst the unique cultural heritage of Busan
Launched in 1987, the Sea Art Festival is a unique arts as well as a cultural festival, held in natural environments on beaches in Busan. The Sea Art Festival 2015 is being held at Dadaepo beach for the first time, following past festivals at Haeundae beach, Gwanganri beach and Songdo beach. This shows the dynamics of Busan that developed the Busan Youth Biennale, which naturally created the Busan Biennale. The festival seeks to sow the seeds of the arts in the culturally isolated western part of Busan.