Mark Rappolt spoke with co-artistic directors Amal Khalaf and Evelyn Simons about what to expect – and what to resist
The Busan Biennale, which changed its name from the Busan International Contemporary Art Festival in 2001, has been taking place in the South Korean port city since the 1990s. Renowned as a space in which to be experimental or in which to test new ideas, the exhibition has developed something of a cultish following among those in the know, but it is now emerging onto a broader world stage. In this it is helped by the fact that Busan has a long history of migration, world trade and cultural exchange. The 2026 edition is helmed by co-artistic directors Amal Khalaf and Evelyn Simons and takes place from 29 August to 1 November.
ArtReview We could start by discussing the biennale’s title, Dissident Chorus, and its themes.
Evelyn Simons It was our working title and then it suddenly became the actual title. Remember, Amal?
Amal Khalaf It got announced. Then we were like – I guess this is it.
ES We’ve been asked the question often: what does dissidence mean, and what does the chorus mean? We like to assemble artists in a polyphonic way. We’re not delivering one unified message about what dissidence can be. It’s more about different artistic approaches to reclaiming one’s autonomy within current extractive systems that are dispossessing us. The biennial is rooted in sound and sound practices, but it’s not going to only be sound work. This idea of looking at one’s voice and embodied forms of knowledge was the guideline.
AR Dissidence and chorus are contradictions, they work against each other, in a way.
AK We were also thinking about what we’ve been doing in terms of our curatorial work. About this idea of dissidence and being comfortable with complexity, and trying to hold this within a biennial structure and within an artworld that really wants clarity and clear authors.
Part of how we started to think about ways to work together, and also invite artists into the space we’re creating together, was to think about the modes of being that we want to hold dear and protect. We wanted to make sure that there was this feeling of complexity from the get-go, in terms of what the invitation is and what we’re inviting audiences into.
AR Does that mean in terms of having a number of works that are not quite as contained as, say, a series of paintings on the wall or a series of videos in boxes?
AK It is also related to the subject matter and the positions that artists take, be it politically or in their approach to the artworld. We’re working with artists like Ultra-red, who do political organising, and we’re working with artists who very much live in the music world.
ES Often with these works there’s an experimental drive to work in ways that are collaborative and working towards installation and more durational pieces. There’s a lot of AV and a lot of performances that we’re putting forward, which is, of course, not always the easiest thing to do, especially within a biennial context that doesn’t traditionally have a legacy of doing that.
AR Sound is a medium that goes everywhere, it leaks and overlaps. It’s a very different proposition, curatorially.
AK Seventy percent of the works are new commissions for this biennial. We were like, let’s just do it. We’ve got a year. There’s that moment where you suddenly have the spaces and the desire for exactly what you’re describing, which is how they will leak into each other.
One of our sites is an abandoned high school on Yeongdo Island. We’re inviting each of the artists to think about that space: some challenge this pedagogical institution, others are thinking about ways of colouring outside the lines. There’s a lot feeding in, both physically and sonically, to that space. What does it mean to have the echo of the sound of someone’s work as you enter this other room in the school? In the Museum of Contemporary Art [MoCA Busan], it’s much more direct how this relationship will happen.
AR The biennale is across three spaces?
ES Yes. There’s MOCA Busan, which is always the main venue. Neither Amal nor I are really white-cube curators. We like to go in dialogue with spaces that have either history or very specific architectural characteristics. That’s what we’re doing in Space OneZ and in the Former Busan Nam High School. We’ve allowed ourselves to be guided by the Korean artists, to have better insight into the localities and the urgencies, and the societal shifts that play into that.
AK Many of the commissions are site-responsive. MoCA is on Eulsukdo Island, which is a nature reserve. It’s on an estuary and it holds a lot of cultural spaces and recreational spaces, but it’s essentially nonresidential. Some artists have responded to this idea of migration and it being a stop for migratory birds, for example.
Yeongdo Island has a very powerful history. We learned a lot about the island through artists like Minouk Lim and Eunji Cho. The island is so close to the North Port, used a lot for Imperial Japanese transportation of goods and people. It’s got a dark history. We wanted sites that spoke and looked out to the sea and the port. Both sites on Yeongdo do that in very different ways.
ES We also have two collaborations with organisations in town, because many of the artists are music producers or are operating in clubs or nightlife. We didn’t want to bring that world into the museum, which still is an institution of power. It’s more about how to embrace this level of opacity and keep things in more subaltern contexts.
We have a collaboration with Output Busan, one of the last clubs. Many are closing down, and this one is also going to close after the biennial. Then we have a collaboration with Radio Revolution. He’s a DJ who launched a community radio station in Busan. We’re working with him to see who of our artists wants to pass by there to do a mix or an interview. It’s also very much aimed at the local audience.
AR How much has the context of Busan specifically informed what you’re doing, and in what ways?
ES I think water, as a poetic sphere and political sphere, has been important. There’s also the whole history of Busan as a city for refugees during the Korean War. We didn’t come with a fixed curatorial premise; the thing kept evolving while we were working with the artists.
The ones Amal mentioned – Eunji Cho, Minouk Lim – but also Heaven Baek: these are all artists specifically dealing with the local context. Minouk Lim will do a performance based on S.O.S. – Adoptive Dissensus [2009]. It’s a performance she did in Seoul on the Han River, and we asked her to revisit that format and do it in Busan. She has dealt with repressed trauma within Korean society for a long time, making very powerful works. She put us in touch with the House of Korean Protest Songs’s Kim Young-Goo, a local researcher who started assembling this archive of bands, CDs, vinyls, records, books, everything from labour songs to songs on unification, in his house. Thanks to Minouk, we are bringing part of the archive in and disseminating it at our biennial.
AK There’s a particular history and position of Busan, the city, within the wider history of democratisation in Korea. A few artists and some of the team who we’ve been working with are from Busan. We came to understand that there have been groups, like the Minjung movement, that wanted to highlight these histories. Busan is also the site of a protest that really inspired us: Kim Jin-Suk sat on a crane for almost a year in 2011.
It was a labour strike against Hanjin, a major industrial power in Busan and all over Korea. It inspired other gatherings here. This year is also the 50th anniversary of a ban placed on protest songs. We were trying to think about what protest is here, what role song and voices historically play here. When we met the House of Korean Protest Songs, we were feeling there’s a bit of amnesia among a lot of younger generations of artists.
One iconic banned protest song, Morning Dew, is being redone by a K-pop group. We’re thinking about these different cycles and really learning with the city and through these commissions. It was important to us that artists were supported to do research as part of their commissions.
AR Do you think some of the amnesia you were talking about is necessary in order that a new generation can escape the past? In Korea, there’s a past that weighs heavily, but a lot of people want to move on.
AK There’s a certain kind of history to be relieved of. It’s been interesting speaking with and getting to know Dew Kim and his community: how a queer community of artists experience Korea today, and what it means to be subversive in Korea, while at the same time being recognised and supported. It was interesting to hear his take, the kinds of critiques and the parallels he makes to the microphone, who holds the microphone. Thinking about big churches in Korea and K-pop: it’s the same energy, that one voice adding to the many. It was interesting to think about the ways people are trying to think differently or trying to speak collectively now.
ES The younger artists tell us there is a big divide between the generations. The idea of ghosts and hauntology also plays into the work. We connected that to this recurring thing that we read about called hang – repressed sadness and grief. Then you go speak with all these younger artists, and they’re like: whatever, that’s from the past. It’s something that older generations are still dealing with, but not them.
AR They can’t agree what hang means anyway.
ES Exactly. It’s also untranslatable into English. That’s the thing with our research; it keeps on going. We came across the work of Hyeyoung Cho, a scholar who is doing research into local youth culture. In terms of protests, the older generations who have stood in the streets with flags say the youth is completely unbothered and passive. Cho goes in deeper and understands that so much is now happening online, where viral expressions can also create a movement, which then feeds back into organising protests. It’s super complex, of course, and it’s also not for us to make any statements about that with the biennial. It’s more about creating a platform where all of these voices can coexist and speak to different themes.
AR How did you choose the artists? Were there criteria you went by?
ES There are people we wanted to work with for a long time. We did a lot of research, a lot of studio visits, to understand who’s working on what, and how we can tap into coproductions to make sure that the lifespan of an artwork is extended. It’s been a very intuitive process.
AK First it was thinking about which artists were working in Korea. Then, key artists who were influencing us as we started to shape Dissident Chorus. Very early on, we were thinking about scores and maps as wayfinding. It’s not a full cacophony of dissensus. Tai Shani is going to present M.I.A.S.M.A – this wall sings a song from her rewriting of Antigone. That energy of speaking to power. There’s a few grounding works that we started with.
AR What outcome would you like from the show? What would you like people to take away?
ES I think it’s a generous biennial, but it can also be a really demanding one. There’s a lot of durational work, a lot of video, a lot of worlds that visitors will be asked to step into. We hope they do, and that they allow themselves to be transported and maybe take out of that a reminder of an autonomy that one holds, but that’s really idealistic, so that’s why I’m ashamed to answer it.
There’s also the fact that we didn’t bring the easiest practices to the biennial team. Our work is much more guided by the people we work with than the objects that we want to present. We do hope this will have longlasting effects.
AK I also hope the artists are going to be happy and that the process is fun in and of itself. There’s always that moment when the show starts to breathe on its own. I just hope that there’s a feeling of energy throughout the biennial.
Busan Biennale 2026, Dissident Chorus, is on view through 1 November
Amal Khalaf is a curator and artist. Among many other projects, she was artistic director of the Bangkok video-art festival Ghost 2568: Wish We Were Here (2025) and cocurator of the Sharjah Biennale 16 (2025). Working with artists, activists, architects, broadcasters, students, urbanists, social services, teachers and labour organisers across different backgrounds, she has initiated many long-term projects that focus on how we work together and the possibilities of collectivity.
Evelyn Simons is a curator and writer based in Brussels. Among her recent projects is the exhibition These Branching Moments (2025) at the Fotomuseum Antwerp. Her practice operates at the intersection between site-specific art commissioning, transdisciplinary collaboration and developing discursive activities. She is particularly interested in facilitating artistic experiment by working at the crossroads of art, nightlife, music, architecture, performance and fashion, initiating collaboration between creatives from various fields.
This interview features in the ArtReview Korea Supplement, a special publication celebrating contemporary Korean art, supported by Korea Arts Management Service
