The Busan Biennale Organizing Committee has announced that Amal Khalaf and Evelyn Simons will be the co-artistic directors for the next Busan Biennale in 2026.
The pair will curate the Biennale at the Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as across a range of urban sites, both indoor and outdoor locations, around the city. The Biennale will unfold through works utilising media, sound, time-based performances and site-specific installations, focusing on the concept of a ‘multi-arts exhibition’.
The curatorial vision will work with Busan’s identity as a maritime city and create an exhibition rooted in the local context. Themes will also highlight global contemporary concerns and underline feelings of resistance, healing, care and hope.
“Their proposal, themed Dissident Chorus, received strong support from the jury for offering five artistic practices that examine the world with a fresh, unique lens – through memory, empathy, healing, resistance, and solidarity, all of which will be mediated by the body, sound, and water. Given their emphasis on community engagement and collaborative practices, we will fully support the realisation of their vision,” shares Joon Lee, Executive Director of the Busan Biennale Organizing Committee.
Since 2019, Khalaf has served as program director at the curatorial platform, Cubitt. She also co-curated the Bahrain Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale. Recently, she co-curated Sharjah Biennial 16 and is currently preparing for Ghost 2568: Wish We Were Here, opening in October in Bangkok.
Simons is an independent curator based in Brussels and recently curated These Branching Moments, currently on view at Fotomuseum Antwerp until September. From 2019 to 2023, she was the artistic director and curator for the visual arts and performance programme at Horst Arts & Music.
