Contact

to.

This Biennale is a journey across five galleries:

 

Gallery 1, Molecules & Me,

begins at the smallest scales of transformation. Things are always changing at the molecular level, even if human perception lacks the resolution to perceive it. A molecule is not the smallest particle known to science, but it may be the smallest thing recognisably itself: a water molecule remains water, but break it apart and it ceases to be so. Likewise, “you” or “me” are not indivisible. We are compositions of memories, habits, desires, relationships, cells, and affects. A molecule is to atoms what a person is to experiences: neither is an elementary unit, but a pattern emerging from relations. What appears stable reveals itself as continuous movement. The self emerges not as a fixed entity but as an ever-changing composition, passing from the molecular to what we might call the molar: from subtle flows, sensations, and affects toward larger structures such as bodies, families, institutions, and systems, where these movements tend to become frozen.
The first gallery, Molecules and Me (G1), begins at the smallest scales of transformation where things are always changing, even when human perception is unable to perceive it. A water molecule remains water, but becomes something else when broken into smaller parts. “You” or “me” are compositions of numerous memories, habits, desires, and relationships in continuous movement, just as the self is also a fragment of larger bodies, families, institutions, and systems.

Gallery 2, Bodies & Bonds,

turns to the intimate worlds where most of our transformations are lived: the body, family, friendship, illness, desire, discipline, and everyday routine. A body is a composition held together by relations. It is not simply an isolated object bounded by skin. Its boundaries are more like membranes than walls: zones of exchange through which we touch and are touched, affect and are affected. Even in solitude, are we ever truly alone? We carry within us memories, habits, languages, obligations, and the traces of countless encounters. Just as atoms form molecules through chemical bonds, human lives are shaped through connections—some inherited, others chosen. Yet bonds can both bind and liberate. Through repetition, exercise, ritual, and care, bodies and selves are not merely maintained but continually reinvented. We do not yet know what the body is capable of, just as we do not yet know what forms kinship, friendship, and family might become. There is no scale of life that cannot be reconfigured through experiment. What appears stable reveals itself as an ever-changing negotiation of boundaries, opening not only to the outside but also to the inside
Even in solitude, are we ever truly alone? A body is a composition held together by relations extending far beyond the surface of its skin. The next gallery, Bodies & Bonds (G2), turns to the intimate worlds where most of our transformations are lived—in the body, the family, in friendships. We carry within us memories, habits, languages, obligations, and the traces of countless encounters forming bonds that can both bind and liberate. Through illnesses, desires, our discipline, and everyday routines, bodies and selves are not merely maintained but continually reinvented, opening outward as well as inward.

Gallery 3, Landscapes & Learning,

moves outward from the intimate worlds of bodies and bonds to the landscape—not as scenery or backdrop, but as a field of relations shaped by forces, memories, histories, and practices accumulated over time. A landscape is the visible trace of countless encounters between human and non-human worlds. Paths, fields, forests, rivers, and settlements emerge through acts of cultivation repeated across generations. In this sense, agriculture is a form of learning: an ongoing practice of observation, adaptation, and care. Yet landscapes are not only geographical. We also inhabit landscapes of training composed of routines, disciplines, institutions, and shared habits through which capacities are cultivated and transmitted. The school is one such landscape. It can be a place of encounter, experimentation, and collective growth, but also a mould that shapes lives according to established forms. Learning therefore becomes inseparable from the environments that sustain it. What appears as a stable landscape reveals itself as a living field of relations, continually formed and transformed through cultivation, transmission, and practice

Gallery 4, Cosmos & Change,

continues the journey to larger scales. The very idea of a cosmos emerged as an answer to the problem of change. A cosmos is not simply the universe, but the universe understood as an ordered whole. Yet order and change are not opposites. The movement of seasons, the birth and death of stars, and the rise and fall of worlds all reveal order unfolding through transformation. In modern cosmology, the universe appears not as a finished structure but as an ongoing process. The cosmos is not a thing but a history. If a molecule is a composition of atoms, a body a composition of relations, and a landscape a composition of practices, then a cosmos may be understood as a composition of worlds. Here, change is encountered not only as a human experience, but as a process unfolding across multiple orders of existence. The elements that make up our bodies were forged through transformations occurring across immense cosmic timescales, linking the capacities of life to processes far exceeding the human. The question shifts from what things are to what they can become. The cosmos appears not as a distant backdrop to life, but as a field of unfolding capacities through which new forms, relations, and worlds continually emerge. And yet these cosmic processes do not remain remote. They return to the scale of lived experience, folded into bodies, habits, perceptions, and practices through which change is once again encountered, inhabited, and made real.

The exhibition concludes with Air & Articulations.

If the preceding galleries trace different scales and modalities of transformation, the epilogue turns to the mediums of air and sound. An emotional architecture which shapes how bodies gather, perceive, and relate. Nearby runs a stream of continuously generated poetry drawn from artworks across the Biennale. These texts migrate beyond the gallery into guidebooks, posters, information desks, merchandise, and social media. One can imagine every utterance leaving traces in the atmosphere, continuing beyond its moment of origin and into everyday life, where transformation continues through the movement of words, affects, encounters, and relations
Moving audiences from the molecular to the cosmic, from intimate relations to collective formations, You Must Change Your Life approaches artistic practice itself as a means of cultivating capacities: capacities to sense, endure, relate, imagine, and transform. Practice emerges here as a force of exercise and repetition that continually tests and reinvents what life can become.
Few cities embody the experience and possibility of change more powerfully than Gwangju. Its history of democratic struggle continues to resonate globally, reminding us that change is not an abstraction but a lived reality. The Biennale approaches Gwangju not only as a site of exhibition, but as a city where art, collective action, and political transformation remain inseparable. This spirit is embodied in the paintings of the May Mothers House, whose persistence, creativity, and commitment the 16th Gwangju Biennale is honoured to share.
Ho Tzu Nyen, Che Kyongfa, Park Gahee & Brian Kuan Wood