In its twelfth incarnation this year, the Gwangju Biennale invites viewers to consider the theme “Imagined Borders” as a point of lift off.  Exploring geopolitics, migration and the state machinery working behind, this biennale comes at a most pressing time; the transpolitical issues in our present age themselves setting the context for the examination of these topics. Held across several locations and within cavernous halls, the art is spread out and sprawling. By no means exhaustive, the following is a taster of works comprising the exciting, labyrinthine display of contemporary art that made up the Gwangju Biennale this year.

1.
Artist Shilpa Gupta
Title 100 Hand drawn maps of my country
What Carbon tracing on paper

The thin, frenzied wiry lines of this work were the imagined drawings of individuals invited by the artist to draw maps from memory. Superimposed on each other, the fuzzy, furry lines are a unique cartography of places existing in minds, either as powerful projections or complete fictitious imagination. The drawings appear powerful and futile at the same time; on the one hand a microcosm of the valiant attempt to demarcate borders and establish an identity, on the other hand, in its abstract waviness and imperfection, small and pathetic in its helplessness to actually assert any defined borders, or to change them.

2.
Artist Tom Nicholson
Title I was born in Indonesia
What 110 resin cast diorama figurines on trestle table, 10 unsynchronised HD videos, vinyl text

The figurines make an arresting display of scenes depicting snapshots of lives cast from interviews the artist conducted with Hazara refugees and asylum seekers. Sculpted in white resin, the numerous figurines placed together create a dull pallor as a backdrop against which the viewer encounters the work. This pallid backdrop, juxtaposed against the aching emotion and vibrant life of each scene, allows the skill of the sculptor to shine through in weaving a metanarrative out of precious individual stories.

3.
Artist Sunwoo Hoon
Title Flat is the New Deep
What Digital drawing

The irresistible draw of digital technology makes this work hypnotizing; the enlarged screen acts almost like the magnified screen of a mobile smartphone. Playing digital images in a loop, the screen broadcasts a report of political demonstrations, unrest and violence in South Korea.  Each image is presented in pixel form, creating an impression of video game violence at once cute, playful, grotesque, and unreal. The actual reality of such demonstrations regularly taking place in South Korea underscore the heavy sense of threat embedded in the work.

4.
Artist Mun Seon Hee
Title Rat-a-tat-tat
What Pigment print

The artist has painted a series of object paintings in memoriam to the 1980 Gwangju Uprising. The use of still life immediately communicates a sinister, overwhelming sense of material decay and mortality. The simple depiction of a drainage pipe affixed on a wall with its rusted water trail, along with the cracks in the discolouring wall paint starkly conveys to the viewer the amount of time passed, and the forgotten relic the object has tragically become. Using dull and subtle pastel colours as an understated canvas for a sorrowful lament, the artist impresses upon the viewer, the solemn message to never forget.

5.
Artist Akira Tsuboi
Title A plant manager Yoshida who saw the dragon which had been believed didn’t exist
What oil, collage on plywood

A response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster that resulted from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, the work is immediately recognisable by a viewer as such in part due to the cataclysmic, apocalyptic character of the event. The artist’s use of charcoal on plywood creates a smoke- charred effect; the viewer can almost smell an acrid burning rising from the veneer. Below, the coiling serpentine form of the dragon increases the hellish sense of death and destruction. The floating, spectral form of the heroic plant manager, Masao Yoshida, looks on the scene in grief like a ghostly guardian, or prophetic portent of doom.

6.
Artist Youseung Jeong
Title Landmark, Land market
What Empty medicine boxes

This installation work is made up of numerous empty medicine boxes; the kind of medicine taken by prostitutes to defend against venereal disease. The boxes are intentionally positioned to take the outline of a map, providing the viewer with a visual representation of the localisation of prostitution. The used, inert boxes are devoid of life and emptied of substance, almost mirroring the physical shell a woman becomes when engaged in the prostitution trade. The repetitiveness of the boxes is a silent, searing indictment against the degradation of women; the extent of waste prostitution creates.