Earth Makes

Opening September 18, the 13th Gyeonggi Ceramics Biennale, Earth Makes, asks what changes when ceramics is understood not as the result of human authorship alone, but as something co-produced by clay, land, fire, climate, labor, technology, and time. Directed by Daehyung Lee, the Biennale brings together 28 teams (65 artists) from 14 countries, with the main exhibition at the Gyeonggi Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art in Icheon and programs across Gwangju, Yeoju, and Gyeonggi Province.

The main exhibition unfolds through three chapters. Made from Earth begins with matter itself, approaching clay as an active material whose behavior—drying, cracking, shrinking, firing, collapsing, and hardening—helps produce form. William Cobbing’s work brings clay into encounter with the body, while Chang-Ho Kim draws on the breathing material intelligence of Korean 'onggi'.

Made by Earth shifts from matter to land, asking how place shapes culture, memory, labor, migration, and collective knowledge. Elena Khurtova works with soils from Korea’s border regions, treating earth as an archive of conflict, division, ecology, and time. Wind, Light, Earth brings architect Youngchul Jang’s hanok pavilion Piljeong into dialogue with Sungjae Choi’s buncheong ceramics, connecting landscape, dwelling, seasonality, and material memory. Focus Australia, with Natalie King as Commissioner, expands these questions through Hermannsburg Potters, Yasmin Smith, and Renée So, whose practices engage Country, First Nations knowledge, ecology, migration, and cultural memory.

Made in Earth turns toward planetary futures, digital technologies, and intergenerational responsibility. Hanna Chang examines how discarded plastics are transformed within natural environments into rock-like formations, tracing how human-made materials enter ecological and geological processes. Scenocosme creates responsive environments linking plants, trees, sound, ceramics, and human touch. Dear Future, developed with 28 Korean universities, asks emerging artists what should be carried from the present into the world 100 years from now.

The Biennale’s academic program extends these questions through two forums. On September 19, Sustainable Ceramics, Beyond Boundaries brings together specialists from Asia, Oceania, and Europe to discuss cultural value, artistic experimentation, interdisciplinary exchange, and sustainability. Speakers include Natalie King, Hege Henriksen, Geertje Jacobs, Toshio Matsui, Ranti Tjan, Yujin Moon, and Clare Twomey. On October 23, Ceramics as Medium, from Material to Thought brings Korean specialists and participating artists into conversation about materiality, technology, education, and ceramics in contemporary art. Together, the forums connect broader international perspectives with discussion of how ceramics moves across disciplines.

The workshop program unfolds through four formats. Pre-Production Workshop and Main Exhibition Performance reveal how works develop before the opening through local research, collaboration, and making, or transform production itself into a live event. Participatory Workshop invite visitors to touch clay and natural materials, engage their bodies and senses, and experience artists’ working methods firsthand. Open Studio bring visitors into active sites of research, experimentation, and production. Talk give artists space to discuss the ideas, materials, places, and processes behind their work.

From September 18 through October 18, these programs carry the Biennale’s questions beyond the galleries into shared processes of research and making. Rather than treating participation as an educational supplement, they explore how works take shape through materials, environments, bodies, and communities. Activities include exploring Icheon’s ecology and geology with artists and local forest interpreters, then translating observations into collective making. Others consider labor through tools and bodily traces, examine soil through scientific and artistic methods, transform urban dust into glaze, and explore touch, sound, memory, and collaboration. Visitors encounter ceramics not only as a finished object, but as a process shaped by place, knowledge, and collective action.

Across the main exhibition, forums, and public programs, Earth Makes reframes ceramics as a way of thinking through our relationships with matter, land, and one another. Clay appears as material, archive, landscape, and carrier of possible futures. By connecting artistic practice with ecology, history, technology, labor, and shared experience, the Biennale asks how making changes when the Earth is understood not as a resource to be shaped, but as an active force within the process.