Changwon Sculpture Biennale 2026 - Resonance Field : House of Changwon · Changwon History & Folklore Museum, Changwon, South Korea

Changwon Sculpture Biennale 2026’s theme “Resonance Field” begins from a contemporary concern responding to the silence, disconnection, and unresponsiveness deepening in an age of hyperconnectivity and acceleration. Algorithms predict our tastes and artificial intelligence offers answers before questions are asked, yet increased connection does not lead to deeper relationships.

As the sociologist Hartmut Rosa has pointed out, modern society is an age in which resonant relationships with the world are steadily weakening. In an environment where answers arrive before questions, we are turning into beings who consume information rather than subjects who respond. Changwon Sculpture Biennale 2026 calls up the oldest question of this age once more: “Can sculpture once again become a field in which humans and the world resonate?”

Resonance does not arise from sameness. It is a vibration that forms only when different rhythms fall out of step and interfere with one another. The Biennale looks for precisely this condition in sculpture. Sculpture is the oldest way in which humans have related to the world, and even today it remains the most fundamental material condition in which resonance can occur.

Seongsan Art Hall & Across Changwon (House of Changwon · Changwon History & Folklore Museum, Jinhae Station Area, Masan Fish Market)

The main exhibition is an experimental field converging on the single resonance proposed by the two co–artistic directors. Seventy-four teams (81 artists) from Korea and abroad develop their work across the interior spaces of Seongsan Art Hall and the outdoor spaces of the city, extending to Masan Fish Market, the House of Changwon, and the Jinhae Station Area. Sculpture appears not as a completed form, fixed on a pedestal, but in a state of continually colliding with, being transformed by, and vibrating with the city’s history.

The formal sensibility drawn from East Asia is reactivated under the conditions of the present. The resistance of ‘carving’ becomes the weight of matter that stops us for a moment before digital immediacy, ‘hollowing’ an environment in which the boundary between human and nonhuman blurs, ‘binding’ the tension of relationships that cannot be sutured, and ‘stacking’ an accumulation in which Changwon’s industry and memory are layered over the future.

Visitors do not stay in a single place. They experience the exhibition by following routes of movement extended across the various districts of Changwon, and physically pass through the field of resonance that the works and the city create together.

Sculpture Before Sculpture is not an exhibition that explains the origins of sculpture, but rather a project that rethinks the fact that humans were already experiencing the world sculpturally before the concept of “sculpture” came into being. In East Asia, sculpture did not begin as an independent genre of art. Buddha statues and stone objects, jangseung (village guardian posts) and sotdae (bird-topped poles), stone statues of civil officials, and stone lanterns were, within pre-art faith, ritual, and the everyday life of communities, the most primal ways in which humans related to the world. 

The exhibition reconfigures the work of leading East Asian artists—including Kim Yunshin, Shim Moonseup, Ma Desheng, Park Sukwon, Chung Kwanmo, Zhan Wang, and Ju Ming—at the level of the formal acts of “carving, hollowing, binding, and stacking.” In doing so, it reinterprets sculpture as a sensibility and structure for relating to the world rather than as a fixed object.

Participating artists:

74 teams (81 artists): Manal AlDowayan, Atlas Mapping Collective, Back Ingon, Beak Jungki, Che Jianquan, Cho Sohee, Choi Juyoung, Choi Manlin, Chung Kwanmo, Amrit Chusuwan, Ding Yi, Patricia Perez Eustaquio, Fu Zhongwang, Gluklya, Guo Chengdong, Ha Sungwook, Han Dong, Han Yohan & Bahc Gaain, Hong Jayoung, Hsu Chia-Wei, Jang Junho, Jang Ukhee, Jeong Jeongju, Jeong Seongjin, Ji Miny, Jiao Xingtao, Ju Ming, Ju Sekyun, Jung Sangsub, Kim Chaelin, Kim Dongyoung, Kim Gina, Kim Juyoung, Kim Sanggyun, Kim Suna, Kim Sungbok, Kim Yunshin, Kimsooja, Kong Euntaek, Kwak Intan, Lah Seonyoung, Lê Công Thành, Li Shun & Yun Youngmi, Liu Jianhua, Jasmina Llobet & Luis Fernández Pons, Ma Desheng, Cédric Maridet, Aernout Mik, Min Sunghong, Mogami Hisayuki, Moon Isaac, Oh Jeisung, Oh Jooyoung, Park Hyunju, Park Sukwon, Pedro Reyes, Shim Moonseup, Shin Jaeeun, Shin Jeheon, Shin Kyungmi, Shin Yejin, Tsubota Masayuki, Andrew Ananda Voogel, Wang Guojian, Wang Shaoqiang, Wang Xiaosong, Wang Zhenghong, Yang Yuyu, Yohan Hàn, Yu Sujin, Yuan Gong, Zhan Wang, Zheng Da, and Zhu Linan.

Artistic Directors: Cho Hyejung, Jiang Jun

Learn more : https://changwonbiennale.or.kr