On June 22, the Arts Council Korea (ARKO) announced that they appointed Kim Hyunjin (chief Regional Curator of Asia, KADIST Art Foundation) as the art director for the Korean pavilion of the 58th International Art Exhibition of Venice Biennale 2019. ARKO has accepted the submission of documents through a public offering from Apr. 30 to May 18 and selected Kim from the five nominated finalists after the presentations of the proposals for the Korean Pavilion exhibition plan and interviews.
Kim earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art theory from Hongik University and completed a Critical Studies program at Malmö Art Academy of Lund University in Sweden. She worked at Alternative Space Loop, Ssamzie Space, Art Sonje Center, and was a co-curator of the 7th Gwangju Biennale and director of the ARKO Art Center. More recently she has curated a number of exhibitions including ‘Vision on Vision – The Lemaître Video Collection’ at SeMA Bunker and ‘2 or 3 Tigers’ at the House of World Cultures in Berlin in 2017. She will reveal the disparate narratives and aesthetics of women artists who are attempting to penetrate heterogeneous areas under the theme of ‘performative feminine narratives that break away and reconstruct East Asian modern times’ at the 2019 Venice Biennale.
Meanwhile, in December last year, the Venice Biennale Foundation selected Ralph Rugoff, the director of the Hayward Gallery, as director of the International Art Exhibition 2019. The 58th International Art Exhibition will be held from May 11 to Nov. 24, 2019, at Giardini di Castello and Arsenale in Venice, Italy.