By dissecting three major art biennials from recent years, this meta-analysis exposes the uneasy friction between curatorial vision and the often unspoken grip of institutional power, revealing how high art’s and curatorial ambitions frequently collide with entrenched systems.

In recent years, biennials have increasingly embraced activist and decolonial frameworks, prioritizing narratives that foreground artists from the Global Majority and interrogate pressing sociopolitical themes such as the Anthropocene, displacement, indigeneity, and systemic crises. Upon retuning from the latest iteration of the Gwangju Biennale I wonder if these mega-events live up to their promises and how they can remain relevant in a rapidly changing world.

In alignment with Ranjit Hoskote's concept of "biennials of resistance," which view biennales as critiques of the global art market, platforms such as Gwangju and Documenta have historically played crucial roles in political resistance and the articulation of postcolonial narratives. Documenta, emerging in post-WWII Germany, distanced the country from its Nazi past, while the Gwangju Biennale, founded in the 1990s, reflected South Korea's democratic transition after military rule.

The latest edition of Documenta, under the curatorial leadership of the Ruangrupa collective, revealed structural limitations within institutional governance, as administrative bodies struggled to support the collective’s radical methodologies, resulting in controversies that diluted the exhibition's intended mission. In contrast, the Venice Biennale, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, was critiqued for its commercially driven presentation, which, despite its thematic focus on foreignness – read by some as an echo of Italy's current fascist government – diluted the struggles of artists in a mass of representation. The Gwangju Biennale, however, maintained a firm connection to its historical roots in social protest. Its 2024 edition, “Pansori: A Soundscape of the 21st Century,” directed by Nicolas Bourriaud alongside local curators Gim Dongsuk, Kwon Yoonseon, and Binna Choi, exemplified a localized yet globally resonant approach, using Pansori, a traditional Korean opera, to analyze contemporary concerns and the interplay between local cultural heritage and transnational issues.

Today, biennales face the challenge of aligning decolonial discourse with their increasing integration into global capitalist systems, which often use them as tools for economic strategy. Reflecting on the trajectories of Documenta, the Venice Biennale, and the Gwangju Biennale over the past two years, this article questions how these mega art events respond to political, ecological, and societal urgencies, and reevaluates their role in the post-pandemic landscape.

Read the full article on I Do Art.