Sea Art Festival 2025
27.9.-2.11.25 / Dadaepo Beach u. a. Orte / Südkorea
For the Sea Art Festival 2025, Holzapfel has focused on traditional weaving and building techniques to create a three-dimensional geometric structure that blurs the line between interior and exterior space. Working with a skilled local carpenter, he carefully selected rice straw; a sustainable material with potential as an alternative to concrete. While similar to wheat or barley straw, rice straw has distinctive structural and chemical properties derived from the nature of the rice plant.
The installation is situated on the beach, between the Gouni Ecological Trail and the sea. A deliberate opening in one of its walls frames the landscape, offering a visual link between these two ecosystems. This passage reflects the idea of the ecotone—a transitional zone where two biological communities meet and overlap in Busan. Ecotones are rich in diversity, often hosting species from both adjacent environments, as well as unique organisms adapted to these boundary conditions.
By placing his structure within such a liminal space, Holzapfel invites reflection on the interwoven nature of craftsmanship, perception, material engagement, and human action.
there is a beautiful view of what we can be, Sketch, 2025
Theme: Undercurrents: Waves Walking on the Water
In Undercurrents: Waves Walking on the Water, the term undercurrents refers to “subsurface flows”—invisible forces operating beneath the surface, both ecologically and culturally. The exhibition explores how dialogic rhythms—formed through flows, winds, sounds, humans, and non-human agents—intersect with everyday life. It also asks how these unseen movements can be translated into shared awareness, seeking new forms of connection through sensory and imaginative engagement. Essentially, Waves Walking on the Water poetically personifies waves as sentient beings—an image that invites deeper and more intuitive interpretations.
Artists
23 Artists/Teams from 17 Countries (38 people):
Anna Anderegg
Antje Majewski
Art-Werk x (re)connecting.earth
Diana Lelonek
Heike Kabisch
Hyeong-seob Cho
Janine Antoni
Jeewi Lee & Phillip C. Reiner
Jin Lee
Marco Barotti
Marie Griesmar
Mathias Kessler and Ahmet Civelek
OMIJA
Olaf Holzapfel
Paula Proaño Mesías
Plastique Fantastique
Raul Walch
Sangdon Kim
Seba Calfuqueo
Som Supaparinya
Uriel Orlow
Viron Erol Vert
Wonkyo Choi
Artistic Directors: Keumhwa Kim, Bernard Vienat
Curatorial Advisor: Sara Kim
Venues: Interstitial Sites at the Edge — Reframing the Sea Art Festival 2025
Returning once again to Dadaepo Beach, this year’s festival will expand beyond the beach to uncover new exhibition venues that reflect the layered and evolving spatial context of the area. Dadaepo Beach, where the freshwater of the Nakdong River meets the saltwater of the South Sea, is known for its rich ecosystems, soft sand, and stunning sunsets. This year, the festival also engages Morundae—a dramatic point where land, sea, and sky converge—as well as the Gouni Ecological Trail, which winds through tidal flats, reed fields, and shifting sand dunes.
Additionally, the Dadae Incineration Plant—constructed in 1998 and decommissioned in 2013—will be repurposed as a site of artistic exploration. Though long forgotten, the facility still bears traces of Busan’s industrial-urban metabolism. Another newly reimagined venue is the Former Molwoon Coffeeshop, located at the entrance of the Morundae coastal walkway. Once a small local cafe, its structure quietly absorbing the layers of time, will reopen its doors to visitors as a space for artistic interpretation.
These locations function not only as exhibition spaces but as “interstitial zones”— thresholds where saltwater and freshwater, nature and humanity, past and present intersect. Rather than fixed boundaries, they reveal invisible presences that emerge at the edge—offering a new landscape shaped by hybridity, circulation, and transformation. The backdrop of Busan offers a unique and immersive setting, allowing audiences to experience the artworks in the context of Busan’s rich culture and geological environment.
Venues
Dadaepo Beach, Morundae, Gouni Ecological Trail, Dadae Incineration Plant, Former Molwoon Coffeeshop
Links
http://busanbiennale.org/BBOCen/index.php?pCode=news&mode=view&idx=12346