Field Trip: 2015 Sea Art Festival
By Sylvia Tsai
Initiated by local artists in 1987, the Sea Art Festival (SAF) in Busan, Korea, celebrates the coastal city’s lush topography with an outdoor exhibition that centers on integrating art with the natural environment. The festival was originally conceived as an annual event that took place at the popular seashores of Haeundae and Gwangalli and was subsequently combined with the government-hosted Busan Biennale from 2000 to 2010. Within the decade, SAF evolved and formed its own identity, which led to its separation from the Busan Biennale in 2011. Since then, SAF has been organized independently and shows on the alternate years to the Biennale.
Beach hopping from the centrally located Songdo Beach—the site of the 2013 edition of SAF—to the more secluded Dadaepo Beach on the southern most tip of Busan, this year’s festival was curated around the theme “See–Sea & Seed.” Artistic director Sung-Ho Kim, instead of staging an open call for participation as was done in previous years, invited 34 Korean and international artists from 16 countries in an effort to engage local residents with contemporary art. A district less traveled to for the everyday Busan city dweller, Dadaepo has gained a reputation for its evening musical fountain show and for its quiet, unspoiled landscape. While this is soon to change—with Dadaepo currently undergoing major redevelopments with a subway station opening next year—Kim saw this moment of transformation as the time to “help sprout a seed of culture” in the area.
