16th Gwangju Biennale UCCN Pavilion (UNESCO Creative Cities Network)

Artists: Andro Eradze, Etsuko Ichihara, Kang Yiyun, Kim Hankyul, Lee Leenam, Orkhan Mammadov, Philippe Cohen Solal, Systaime, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Ugo Arsac

Facade artists: Bita Ghassemi, Enar de Dios Rodríguez, Peter Weibel, Rafael Alberto Erazo Ramirez

Gwangju Media Art Platform (G.MAP) presents the UCCN Pavilion (UNESCO Creative Cities Network) of the 16th Gwangju Biennale, Mondiacult Scape: Nothing of the Cities is lost. This pavilion is the first exhibition of a newly formed pavilion consortium, in which around ten UNESCO Creative Cities have joined together. 

At Mondiacult (2022), the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies attended by some 150 countries, culture was declared a global public good, and the conference urged the integration of forward looking agendas and concrete goals to realize this. The Mondiacult Declaration signifies that culture is no longer merely a tool for economic development or a political instrument, but has entered its own domain as a goal to be protected in itself and as an independent field of policy. It shows that cultural rights, the basic rights that every human being should hold simply by living, are being recognized. In this spirit, the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) continues its solidarity through international norms that preserve urban culture, safeguard world heritage, and uphold the rights of art for sustainable cities.

 Building on the Mondiacult Declaration, the UCCN Pavilion takes an in-depth look at the cultural values of cities that are gradually disappearing, as well as their multilayered dimensions and hidden sides. To this end, the exhibition brings together works by ten leading artists from Korea and abroad, whose practices visualize the historical scars, marginalized stories, and hidden layers held within cities.

For this reason, the exhibition has selected ten artists who reveal the many hidden sides and layers held within the city. Within lives and wounds, war and memory, the human and the nonhuman, and the reverse side of machines, they do not turn away from the disappearing voices, and continue their endless voyage back into life.

Participating artists include Ugo Arsac, who received the Best Immersive Work Award in the Immersive Competition at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival; Kim HanKyul who was selected Munch Museum’s SOLO OSLO 2026: Etsuko Ichihara, who received an Honorary Mention in the Interactive Art category of Prix Ars Electronica for her reinterpretations of Japanese traditional culture and spirituality through media art; Kang yiyun, who has continued to explore the boundaries between technology and art through collaborations with Google and NASA. Tuan Andrew Nguyen, who has developed a distinctive artistic practice through video and installation, exploring narratives of history and memory. Together with other leading artists shaping the international media art scene, they participate in this exhibition.

Cities dream of great change even as much is forgotten. The city holds both change and the act of protecting change, cradling all of it as a mother would. Cultural preservation and change may seem like contradictory words, yet the participating artists' works reveal, vividly, how art blooms and coexists between them, or how it protects and struggles to endure. Now, when everything changes so rapidly, and the countless predictions of how to respond to a shifting environment feel like the only means of future survival, art that protects what time has layered stands before us. Within the solidarity of the ten cities that have come together, we hope you enjoy the coexisting landscapes of diverse histories, politics, ethnicities, and distinct cultures.

Text: Kim Hana G.MAP Curator

Hosted and organized by Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju Media Art Platform (G.MAP) / Directed by Heokyung Kim (Director, G.MAP) / Curated by Hana Kim (Curator, G.MAP) with assistance from Yejin Hwang, Jisu Hong (Exhibition Coordinator, G.MAP).

Partners: Korean National Commission for UNESCO
Austin (USA), Cali (Colombia), Enghien-les-Bains (France, CDA), Sapporo (Japan), Karlsruhe (Germany, ZKM), Košice (Slovakia), Limoges (France), Linz (Austria), Tbilisi (Georgia)