Gwangju’s Sonic Tapestry Weaves Protest, Migration, and Echoes of the Everyday

The 2024 Gwangju Biennale dials down its usual focus on the city’s turbulent 1980 uprising, instead tuning into the rhythms of pansori—a Korean folk tradition where public noise becomes art. This year’s show pulses with the voices of 72 living artists, each exploring how sound shapes our sense of self and society. Mira Mann’s installations scatter folk tales and family memories across empty houses, blending Korean migration stories with the echoes of pungmul drumming. Andrius Arutiunian conjures the earth’s subterranean rumbles and reimagines lost harmonium performances, blurring the line between history and sensation. Beaux Mendes’s shadowy landscapes, painted with marble powder, unsettle the grand narratives of German Romanticism and hint at family histories marked by displacement. From oil’s journey to plastic in Yuyan Wang’s surreal film to Gaëlle Choisne’s salt-stained tributes to disaster, the Biennale’s soundscape is both a lament and a call to listen. In Gwangju, even silence is never empty—it’s charged with memory, dissent, and the promise of renewal. #GwangjuBiennale #ContemporaryArt #SoundArt #Culture