HIAP participates in the Gwangju Biennale Pavilion Project

HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme has been invited to realise a pavilion for the Gwangju Biennale Pavilion Project of 2018 along with Palais de Tokyo and Philippine Contemporary Art Network.

HIAP Pavilion’s exhibition and public programme, titled Fictional Frictions, sets out to explore shifting understandings of borders. Following HIAP’s tentacular way of operating, the exhibition builds a bridge for artists and thinkers from Finland and South Korea to gently collide and coexist for a moment. The pavilion is curated by Jenni Nurmenniemi (HIAP) who has in recent years worked extensively on Frontiers in Retreat, a five-year project on art and ecology.

Artists Nestori Syrjälä and Elina Vainio with Curator Jenni Nurmenniemi. Photo: Sergio Urbina

The exhibition investigates diverse mechanisms of boundary making, and fosters unexpected entanglements. Finnish artists Elina Vainio (b.1981) and Nestori Syrjälä (b.1983) will examine humans’ influences and ways of relating to ecological transformations.

Both artists work across sculpture, installation, video, and performance. For Gwangju Biennale, they will realise new, context-specific iterations of their recent installations. In the following weeks, HIAP will announce the names of the participating Korean artists.

HIAP Pavilion is realised as part of the 12th Gwangju Biennale Pavilion Project, with the support of Gwangju Biennale Foundation. The pavilion is realised in partnership with Frame Contemporary Art Finland.

The 12th Gwangju Biennale runs from September 7 until 11 November 2018 in Gwangju, South Korea. Referencing Benedict Anderson’s famous study of nationalism, Imagined Communities, the 12th Gwangju Biennale’s theme, Imagined Borders, discusses a contemporary phenomenon in depth, wherein national and geopolitical borders are being reorganized after globalisation.