Arts Council Malta will be participating in the prestigious Gwangju Biennale in South Korea in 2026, with the project BEJN / IN-BETWEEN. This will be the first time Malta is taking part in this event, which has become firmly established as one of Asia’s foremost contemporary art events, serving as a stage for leading contemporary artists to present experimental and innovative work.
The artistic team for BEJN / IN-BETWEEN is made up offour leading contemporary artists: Norbert Francis Attard, Sam Alekksandra, Julien Vinet, and Michael Quinton.
The project will see the artists mapping out an ecosystem that unfolds between Malta and Korea through immersive installations, transforming the Malta Pavilion into a living threshold. The Pavilion will forge a new in-between: a sacred site reimagined for an age of polarisation: not as refuge from tension, but as a crucible where opposing energies generate their light.
The project was selected during a competitive process by an evaluation board chaired by the International Cultural Relations Directorate at Arts Council Malta. The board was made up by:
- Dusu Choi, Head of Gwangju Biennale Exhibition Department
- Sean Buhagiar, Artistic Director, Teatru Malta
- Rupert Cefai, CEO of Fondazzjoni Kreattività
The artists and the concepts
Norbert Francis Attard: ArtPolygon
In the ArtPolygon, artist-architect Norbert Francis Attard introduces this sense of negotiated tension throughout the building. The work will see multitudes of thin, stretched elastic bands that reach across the walls, ceilings, and floors of the two rooms – an explosion of bands, like a firework in suspension – that gradually morph in colour, referencing Maltese individuality but also Malta’s most iconic gathering of thresholds: the festa.
Sam Alekksandra and Julien Vinet: PONKS – Rope Temple
PONKS introduces a release of this tension through a contemporary, collaborative ritual, creating the first-ever large-scale poetic participatory installation linking Korea and Malta. For the Glass Polygon, the duo will construct a (con)temporary temple of poetry, filling the glass walls with verses by poets and amateurs from both countries, and sanctified by hundreds of sacred ropes. The installation will be called Rope Temple.
From the outside, Rope Temple announces itself through verse: Maltese and South Korean poetry will cover the entire outer walls of the Glass Polygon (Library) like a living skin of protective poetry, poetic ex-voto visible to all.
Michael Quinton and co: BasePolygon
In the basement of the Glass Polygon, the ‘crypt’ of the rope temple will introduce three rooms presenting three stages of the portal opened between Malta and Korea on the surface.
For the first subterranean room, sound artist Michael Quinton explores sonic transmutations of our perceptions. He will develop, while in Korea and Malta, an in-between through sound – the gap between the active and passive, hold and release, coming and going, life and death, existence and non-existence.
The second space is a transportation of the audience to Malta and back. This allows BEJN / IN-BETWEEN to create an active link between the two countries, with mirroring programmes in both places during the two months of the biennale.
The third and final room will complete the show by proposing a transcription of the artworks, poems, and interventions that happened during the creative process and the residency in Gwangju, in a downloadable book.
The conversation expands further through workshops at Sangmyung University in Seoul, where Attard and PONKS will extend the project’s investigation of liminal space during the biennale period.
The Gwangju Art Biennale
Arts Council Malta, under the auspices of the Ministry for the Arts, Lands and Local Government, has been entrusted to act as the commissioner and the contracting authority of the Malta Pavilion at the 16th edition of the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea.
The theme for the 16th Gwangju Biennale is You must change your life, a phrase quoted from the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. The artistic director is Ho Tzu Nyen.
The South Korean Biennale aims to explore the transformative power of art, and how a truly great work of art can inspire profound change, and expand human potential.
The Gwangju Biennale Pavilion upholds respect for cultural diversity by allowing each pavilion to independently curate its exhibitions, offering an opportunity to display their nation’s contemporary art on a global stage.
Located in the southwestern region of South Korea, the metropolitan city of Gwangju is steeped in a rich tradition of art and culture.
The Gwangju Biennale will be held from September to November 2026.
