POSITION PAPERS Curators
The 7th Gwangju Biennale
September 5, 2008 – November 9, 2008
The 7th Gwangju Biennale, artistic director Okwui Enwezor and co-curators, Hyunjin Kim and Ranjit Hoskote, are pleased to announce the appointment of five key contributors to the Biennale. Patrick D. Flores, Jang Un Kim, Abdellah Karroum, Sung-Hyen Park, and Claire Tancons have been selected for their accomplishments as writers, intellectuals, and specifically curators to create a series of interventions called POSITION PAPERS for the upcoming Gwangju Biennale.
As one of the three main platforms for the Biennale, POSITION PAPERS will feature small group exhibitions of no more than five artists each, where each curator is encouraged to present and install work by artists of their choosing. The POSITION PAPERS are an open format with no other restriction than the one mentioned above and will correlate to the other platforms of the 7th Gwangju Biennale, namely ON THE ROAD and INSERTIONS, as they will be asked to intervene into the fabric of the biennale as well as the city of Gwangju. Each of the projects developed as part of POSITION PAPERS is to be seen as a work in progress, a provisional essay towards a larger horizon, and may consist of previously existing work, or may include newly-commissioned artworks, and will open, along with the rest of Annual Report: A Year in Exhibitions, on September 5, 2008 and run until November 9, 2008.
The five POSITION PAPERS curators were selected based on their innovation, scholarship, and multidisciplinary research at a local level, and their ability to organize and maintain successful programs and content. The foundation for the 7th Gwangju Biennale is extremely honored to be able to work on the realization of these POSITION PAPERS, and will release specific details about each intervention in the upcoming months.
Curator Biographies
Patrick D. Flores (born 1969) is Professor of art history, theory, and criticism at the University of the Philippines at Diliman, and is a curator at the National Art Gallery of the Philippine National Museum in Manila. A recognized scholar in the fields of Philippine and Asian art, Flores has organized several national and international platforms, including “Luz: Traces of Depiction” at the National Museum of the Philippines (2006), and “Under Construction: New Dimensions of Asian Art” at the Japan Foundation Asia Center (2000-2003). Flores is the author of numerous articles and several books concerning Philippine art.
Abdellah Karroum (born 1970) works as an independent art researcher, publisher and curator. He is the founder and artistic director of several art projects, including ‘L’appartement 22’, an experimental space for encounters, exhibitions and artists’ residencies founded in 2002 in Rabat, Morocco; the art expeditions project ‘Le Bout Du Monde’; and a series of art publications, ‘éditions hors’champs.’ Karroum is currently doing research for a thesis at EHESS (Paris) on contemporary art in the Maghreb and its international connections. Karroum has curated numerous exhibitions for Le CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, and was one of the curators for the 2006 DAK’ART Biennial for African Contemporary Art.
Jang Un Kim (born 1975) is a curator and art critic based in Seoul, South Korea. A member of several contemporary art collectives in Seoul (including the Pidgin Collective and Friendly Enemies), Kim has engaged issues of cultural policy, the Korean postcolonial situation, and the use of alternative space by working as an educator, an editor of various publications, and through organizing numerous events in nontraditional venues. Kim has worked recently as curator of the Anyang Public Art Project Foundation and as a lecturer at the Korean National University of Arts in Seoul.
Sung-Hyen Park graduated in 1997 from the Graduate School of Fine Arts at the College of Fine Arts at Hongik University and has worked since 1995 as the curator of the Gwangju Lotte Gallery. Park has recently implemented a number of public art projects and exhibitions, including “Nine roads to go up to the backyard under the sky” (2006), “Something wonderful is happening in the Gwangjucheon (creek)” (2003), the Field Art Project (2002). He has also worked since 2005 to establish an ongoing environmental arts festival in Gwangju, an event that has led to exhibitions in the Okgwa Art Museum and the Cultural Space Seodong.
Claire Tancons lives and works in New Orleans where she is associate curator at the Contemporary Arts Center and for Prospect.1 New Orleans. A scholar on Caribbean carnivals engaged with issues of Creolization, Tancons is currently co-organizing a program about the common cultural legacy in street carnivals and brass band music in Cape Town and New Orleans as well as planning an exhibition on contemporary carnival arts. She has published various texts and has delivered lectures on the topic in the US, Trinidad, South Africa
and Suriname.
