Prospero | The tenth Gwangju Biennale

From protest to celebration

An energetic, irreverent show that fuses past and present-day anxieties in South Korea

By S.C.S. | GWANGJU, SOUTH KOREA

SOUTH KOREANS did not hear Talking Heads' hit album "Burning Down the House" on its release in 1983. American pop was banned in a country that was straining under a military dictatorship. Three years earlier the regime had violently crushed a democratic uprising in Gwangju, a city in the south-west, in which thousands of students and citizens were arrested, died or went missing.

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