This study positions the exhibition as a site of cultural translation and examines curatorial practice as a cultural translational act in the Korean art scene since the 1990s, with a focused analysis of the second and fourth Gwangju Biennales. By inte...
This study positions the exhibition as a site of cultural translation and examines curatorial practice as a cultural translational act in the Korean art scene since the 1990s, with a focused analysis of the second and fourth Gwangju Biennales. By interrogating the contemporary significance of the emergence and expansion of the curator, the authorship of exhibitions, and globalized exhibitions and curatorial practices through the lenses of cultural translation, postcolonialism, and globalization, the research critically explores these intersections. The study demonstrates that exhibitions transcend mere presentational spaces, emerging as performative sites where heterogeneous cultures negotiate, intrude, and continuously invent and redefine new meanings in a world formed by modernist epistemic structures. Moreover, it reveals the curator as a strategic agent of cultural translation who deconstructs, reinterprets, and reconfigures existing narratives of artists, artworks, and surrounding phenomenological environments, thereby shaping novel temporal and spatial narratives through the exhibition. Ultimately, the research substantiates curatorial practice as a critical knowledge practice that dismantles dominant narratives and generates epistemological fractures through the postcolonial performative act of cultural translation.