13th Gwangju Biennale — Minds Rising Spirits Tuning

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Gallery 3

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Bodies in Desire, Beyond the Disciplinary Fold

What forms of intelligence become dominant formations—technocratic or heteronormative––in today’s globalized societies? As authoritarian forces rise and agents of militarism proliferate, we consider here the ways in which collective freedom is harnessed through social imaginaries that resist the grip of incarceration and surveillance to mobilize systems of care and move from injurious models of society toward conditions of repair and restorative justice. On this floor, we explore plural conditions of bodies and the hybridity of pleasure and desire beyond the disciplinary logic imposed on mind-body relations. The active interplay around surveillance, racial profiling, and predictive policing is exposed in Lynn Hershman’s Shadow Stalker(2019). Legacies of militarism and martial cultures in neocolonies are examined in Cian Dayrit’s survey of military paraphrenalia, anti-communist propagranda, and ephemera from paramilitary recruitment and training institutions in the Philippines and South Korea that are tied to American imperialism. Gwangju-based artist and activist Sangho Lee’s Anatomical Chart of Authority (1989) and The Map of Hell (2000) reveal enduring aspects of military rule and the groundswell of dissent, memorialization, and subjective experiences of trauma that evolve toward peace. Dissecting global power dynamics through meticulously drawn manuals, Afrofuturist visionary Abu Bakarr Mansaray makes visible the mechanisms of war, disease, and conspiracy theories. The work of Cecilia Vicuña revisits networks of solidarity in Pinochet’s Chile and the Vietnam War in the 1970s. Vaginal Davis and Jacolby Satterwhite navigate the inheritances of structural violence and enslavement of the queer body through punk aesthetics, refuge in chosen kin, and radiant love. Kang Seung Lee’s Display system for QueerArch (2021) excavates queer activism and sexual liberation to counter the profound erasure of minority histories in his homeland. Sahej Rahal’s digital character animates a mythological landscape to simulating live dramas of tyranny, while Emo de Medeiros’s Vodunauts (2017-) connect the increasing omnipresence of augmented intelligence in our everyday surroundings with figurations relating to the spiritual heritage, masks, and carnival cultures of Benin. This gallery is secretly watched over by Patricia Domínguez’s totemic figure Cosmic Weeping (2019), connecting indigenous tears to society’s fatigue accelerated by neoliberal labour performance standards, novel forms of enslavement, and capitalist greed.