Applications are now open for the 2025 Gwangju Biennale Academy International Curator Course.
This immersive on-site course is designed to support emerging curators, theorists, and cultural practitioners from around the world.
Born out of Okwui Enwezor’s Global Institute(2008), the course began in 2009 and has worked with renowned curators such as Maria Lind and Ute Meta Bauer, producing 186 alumni over the past 15 years. Following the footsteps, this year’s course will be directed by Binna Choi, curator of the Hawai‘i Triennial 2025 and artistic director of the 2026 Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Choi presents the course with the theme “On Nationhood and Curatorial Practice.” Choi states,
“On the condition of the ongoing legacy of colonialism and in the long aftermath of the euphoria of globalization, I believe the notion of nation holds a possibility for collective action embedded in collective memory, self-transformation, and the physicality of land, ocean, and other elements to make a place or ‘animal nation, plant nations,’ as much as its well-known, troubling problematics. Whereas art and curatorial practices cannot be fully free from it, they also can consciously and critically ‘take part’ in it, (re)create, (re)construct, and shape it together. Much of this possibility can be learned from genealogies of struggles for independence, sovereignty, or democracy, including the recent political unrest and resistance in South Korea, where art and culture have been deeply embedded, providing antidotes to non-participatory liberalism, myopic localism, authoritarian statehood, and the related ideas of art and curation.”
Over 15 days in Gwangju and Seoul, participants will form a provisional think tank of learning from each other, speculating and imagining together, facilitated by Binna Choi as the guest professor. The course will be accompanied by a number of other esteemed art and cultural professionals across the world who will be conversational partners with their experiences and case studies; field trips in and out of Gwangju; self-organized experiments; and the formation of curatorial proposals.
Course overview
Course dates: September 7–21, 2025 *Orientation is scheduled for September 7 / Application deadline: June 15, 2025, 11:59pm (KST) / Eligibility: Professionals in contemporary art, curators or students in related fields, aged 35 or under. / Benefits: Course tuition, accommodation for the duration of the course, Partial airfare expenses (details will be provided upon acceptance), course certificate / Host: Gwangju Biennale Foundation/Gwangju Metropolitan City / Language: English.
Application requirements
–Application Form (download here): Application form; Statement of motivation and potential contribution (500 words); Curatorial proposal, experience, or case study related to the course theme (500 words)
–CV
–Portfolio: a copy of the most relevant materials for past curatorial activities including exhibitions and essays (at max. ten pages)
–Letter of Recommendation (Optional)
Submission
–All documents must be submitted in English and as separate PDF for each section (1–4)
–Email to curatorcourse@gwangjubiennale.
To download the application form, please visit here.
Application deadline: June 15, 2025
Notification
–Successful candidates will be notified individually by 27th June, and the results will also be posted on the official website.
Please note that the course does not guarantee the visa approval of individual participants. Participants from previous editions are not eligible to apply. For inquiries, please contact curatorcourse@gwangjubiennale.