Gwangju Biennale 2023: Artists To Watch

1. Vivian Suter

Among the better known artists at this year's Biennale, Vivian Suter works on her unstretched canvases in an open-air studio on a former coffee plantation in Panajachel, Guatemala.

Canvases are lifted off the ground, hang in the trees, and are very much impacted by nature and the elements that surround them. Rain splatter, mud, and dirt are all part of the process.

This relationship between her work and nature is honoured in Gwangju by the decision to host her installation at Horanggasy Artpolygon, a community art space located on the foothills of Yangnim. A half-glass structure with a tree wrapping its way around its central pillar, the installation seems at home as the natural sunlight filters in.

The presentation features both new and existing works hung at various angles and levels. Weaving through the multicoloured maze of canvases, viewers are transported to the tropical Guatemalan landscapes where the works were executed.

2. Mata Aho Collective, Tuakirikiri (2023)

Four Māori women make up the Mata Aho Collective. Having met during a residency programme in 2012, they found a shared interest in the hands-on techniques of their ancestors and have since come together to create large-scale fibre-based works that focus on the contemporary realities of Māori people.

A dominating presence in the exhibition space for both its scale and colour, Tuakirikiri (2023) is a contemporary application of Māori weaving techniques. The sculpture is made from woven industrial ratchet tie downs, a material ubiquitous around the world for tying down heavy loads, while the choice of orange and silver is synonymous with that of workers' high-visibility safety vests.

In Māori culture, kawe is a device for carrying babies, food, and resources. The term also refers to obligation and burden. With this in mind, the tension and support that this sculpture commands is particularly notable.

3. Minjung Kim, Mountain (2022)

Minjung Kim is one of only two artists showing at the Gwangju Biennale who were born in the South Korean city—painter Yeon-gyun Kang being the other.

Where Kang touches on his heritage by revisiting personal memories of the May 18 Democratic Movement in 1980, Minjung Kim creates works on paper that reinterpret the aesthetics of traditional Korean painting.

Working with Korean hanji paper, a material favoured by Dansaekhwa artists Park Seo-Bo and Kwon Young-Woo, her work and painstaking process are a testament to the lasting significance of Korean painting traditions in Gwangju.

Scalloped layers have been excavated by hand to create the wave-like formations you see in Mountain (2022). Black ink slips into grey wash as you move your way up the canvas, and upon closer inspection you'll notice the edges of each curved mountain top have been singed with an incense stick.

4. Edgar Calel, The Echo of an Ancient Form of Knowledge (Ru k' ox k'ob'el jun ojer etemab'el) (2023)

Arrangements of fruit and vegetables are offered to Kaqchikel ancestors in Edgar Calel's presentation. Informed by the artist's experiences as an Indigenous Maya of the highlands in Guatemala, his work evokes memories of and honours the traditions of his community.

Calel made headlines when he rejected an offer from the Tate to acquire an earlier edition of this work at Frieze London 2021. Instead, he brokered a deal between the Tate Fund, the artist, the Kaqchikel people, and his gallery in Guatemala City, Proyectos Ultravioleta, that allowed the Tate to purchase a 13-year custodianship of the work, including the Mayan ritual needed to install it.

To the left of the installation is a large ink-on-paper drawing depicting the artist's memory of his grandmother's house.

5. Mamma Andersson, A Storm Warning (2021)

With few paintings adorning the walls in Gwangju, the timeless snapshots of Mamma Andersson's paintings were a welcome addition to 'Luminous Halo', a section of the exhibition positioning the spirit of Gwangju as a model for resistance and solidarity.

Her anonymous interiors have been a regular fixture on the walls of galleries David Zwirner and Stephen Friedman Gallery, but this appearance in Gwangju is a first for the Swedish artist in South Korea.

Her use of shadow in this painting is particularly enviable, made all the more stark by the plant's spindly leaves. Archival photographs and film imagery form the basis of her works, yet here it seems she has placed those frames directly into the painting.

Three small figurative paintings or postcards, one seemingly reminiscent of Michelangelo's David, and another featuring a figure impaling themselves, are patched onto the wall with little explanation.

This sense of the unknown and feeling of absence run through the three other works on show, The Maverick (2014), The Cabinet (2016), and Artefakter med Fikus / Artifacts with Ficus (2021).