1. You have decided to take part in the Changwon Sculpture Biennale 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Has there been any challenges?
2. The traditional exhibition model no longer applies in the post-pandemic era, calling for alternatives. What kind of role do you think biennales and art exhibitions should play in the future?
3. Offline visits to indoor exhibitions (Main Exhibition, Special Exhibitions 1 & 2) were restricted due to the government’s social distancing policy from September 17 to October 4, 2020 during which the audience were able to enjoy artworks only through online platform. The exhibitions have been made available both online and offline afterwards. What do you think of the online exhibitions at the Changwon Sculpture Biennale 2020?
4. Do your submissions to the Changwon Sculpture Biennale 2020 have any connections with its theme, “Non-Sculpture: Light or Flexible“? If they do, tell us your thoughts in relation to materials, forms, methodologies and contexts.
5. What’s your impression of the Biennale in Korea?
6. What do you make of the Changwon Sculpture Biennale 2020, compared to other biennales? Tell us your honest feedback.
7. What are your plans after the Changwon Sculpture Biennale 2020?
Artist: Anka Lesniak
Artwork: Sculpture Rituals
Q. You have decided to take part in the Changwon Sculpture Biennale 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Has there been any challenges?
A. The most challenging was uncertainty to the last moment if it will be possible to come to Korea or not. I intended to do a live performance. When it turned out that I can only record my performance and send the video to present on the exhibition, my performance in fact turned into a video-work. Video, contrary to the performance art, is a cold medium for me and has a different energy than the live performance. Thus the question for me was how to "transfer" the presence of my body as a body of a performance artist when the body is not present itself in a given space. How to give an impression of the closeness of the body when in fact it is far away.
Q. Offline visits to indoor exhibitions (Main Exhibition, Special Exhibitions 1 & 2) were restricted due to the government’s social distancing policy from September 17 to October 4, 2020 during which the audience were able to enjoy artworks only through online platform. The exhibitions have been made available both online and offline afterwards. What do you think of the online exhibitions at the Changwon Sculpture Biennale 2020?
A. Yes. Non-Sculpture I understand as a critical approach to the medium of Sculpture. I don't treat it as something contradictory to the Sculpture, but rather as its extension to the borders of performance art, interactive art, participatory art. In the work proposed for the Changwon biennale, I based my video-performance on the gestures of sculptors during their work, and I used some tools for making a sculpture in a traditional way. But I did not make any sculpture. I rather treated the tools and gestures I used as a kind of ritual. Today the process of creating art seems to be more important that the object/artwork itself. Maybe it's the answer for quickly changable world in which the materiality consisting of objects turns into the virtual reality where actions take the place of objects.
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