The Changwon Sculpture Biennale 2026, 《Resonance Field》, will take place over 47 days, from September 30 to November 15, across five venues throughout Changwon: Seongsan Art Hall, House of Changwon, Changwon History & Folklore Museum, the Jinhae Station area, and Masan Fish Market.
 
The Changwon Sculpture Biennale is Korea’s only sculpture biennale. Growing out of the MoonShin International Sculpture Symposium in 2010 and held every two years since 2012, it has functioned as a platform where contemporary sculpture discourse intersects with international currents in sculpture.
 
Led by Korean curator Cho Hyejung and Chinese curator Jiang Jun, this year’s biennale marks the first time in the event’s history that it has been organized under a co-artistic director structure that includes an international curator.
 
Emerging from the encounter between the two curators’ distinct backgrounds and perspectives, the Changwon Sculpture Biennale 2026 takes “Resonance Field” as its theme, beginning from the question of whether sculpture can become a field in which humans and the world resonate.

Before it became an art form, sculpture was an integral part of life and one of the oldest ways in which humans have related to the world. The formative attitudes and sensibilities embedded in traditional East Asian ways of life can still be found in contemporary sculpture today, expressed through material and the body, the gestures of the hand, and the resistance of materials.
 
《Resonance Field》 proposes that sculpture’s presence and corporeality can reactivate resonance between humans and the world, and between human beings themselves.
 
This year’s Changwon Sculpture Biennale comprises the main exhibition and two special exhibitions, featuring 74 teams (81 artists). The two co-artistic directors present distinct methodologies that converge in the main exhibition, 《Resonance Field》.
 
Director Cho Hyejung explores the conditions for resonance through ways of relating to the world, while director Jiang Jun designs structures through which resonance can be sustained. The approaches developed in their respective exhibitions, 《Sculpture Before Sculpture》 and 《Changwon Sculpture Atlas》, meet and resonate in the main exhibition, 《Resonance Field》.
 
《Sculpture Before Sculpture》 serves as the starting point for connecting the longstanding formative sensibilities of East Asia with contemporary sculpture today. The main exhibition, 《Resonance Field》, builds on these concerns, extending them to the conditions of contemporary sculpture within today’s society and urban environments.
 
《Changwon Sculpture Atlas》 seeks to rediscover sculptures that have become invisible despite being embedded in the city and everyday life, tracing connections across the main exhibition and previous editions of the biennale. By forging new links between artworks and places, urban memories and present-day life, it seeks to restore a sense of connection with sculpture.

The main exhibition, 《Resonance Field》, connects five venues—Seongsan Art Hall, House of Changwon, Changwon History & Folklore Museum, the Jinhae Station area, and Masan Fish Market—through routes linking Changwon, Masan, and Jinhae. This approach invites visitors to physically experience a field of resonance shaped jointly by artworks and the city.
 
While Seongsan Art Hall serves as a site where resonance itself takes place, House of Changwon and Changwon History & Folklore Museum become spaces where traditional settings and contemporary art resonate with one another.
 
The Jinhae Station area brings together memories and the present against the backdrop of modern railway history, while Masan Fish Market forms an experiential field of resonance as a living site where the currents of the sea and the city intersect.
 
Artists from Korea and abroad, including Kimsooja, Pedro Reyes, Manal AlDowayan, and Liu Jianhua, present works throughout the city. Here, sculpture is neither fixed on a pedestal nor treated as a completed object. Situated across Changwon’s diverse times and places, it transforms and vibrates through its relationships with the surrounding environment, people, and the city’s memories.
 
In an era when images and data circulate at unprecedented speed, sculpture’s materiality and corporeality, along with its weight and tactile qualities, emerge as increasingly significant modes of sensory experience.
 
The exhibition reveals how the formative sensibilities embedded in East Asian ways of life, and the ways of relating to the world that have developed from them, are transformed and expanded in contemporary sculpture. Changwon is not merely a backdrop for the exhibition but a condition in which different times and memories converge, allowing resonance to emerge.

Curated by Cho Hyejung, 《Sculpture Before Sculpture》 is a project that rethinks the fact that humans were already experiencing the world sculpturally before the concept of “sculpture” came into being.
 
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 as a fixed object.
 
Curated by Jiang Jun, 《Changwon Sculpture Atlas》 is a map-based digital archive that links this year’s exhibited works with public sculptures from previous editions of the Changwon Sculpture Biennale through geolocation data.
 
The exhibition invites visitors to reinterpret participating artists’ works within Changwon’s historical, geographical, and cultural contexts. Some artists have also created new works based on keywords identified through their research in Changwon. Rather than presenting only new sculptures, the exhibition seeks to restore a sense of connection with sculptures that already exist within everyday life.

On October 1, the day after the opening, the international academic conference “Resonance Network” was held in the Small Theatre at Seongsan Art Hall, together with the academic contribution program “Resonance Study” and the special lecture series “Resonance Academy”.
 
The outcomes of the citizen participation projects “Plant Care Project” and “Kere Kere Waruru,” along with “Resonance Docent” and “Resonance Workshop: I’m a Sculptor, Too / We’re Sculptors, Too,” will be unveiled in the main exhibition, and visitors can take part in completing works during the exhibition period as well.
 
The biennale will pursue a multilayered global communications strategy that extends beyond Korea to encompass global networks in the West and the Chinese-speaking art world. As part of this effort, multilingual content will be made available on digital platforms.
 
Detailed information about the event and its programs can be found on the Changwon Sculpture Biennale website (https://changwonbiennale.or.kr) and its official social media channels.

References

• 창원조각비엔날레 보도자료 (Changwon Sculpture Biennale Press Release)