A sneak peak at the Austrian Pavilion at the Gwangju Biennale
16th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea
5 September - 15 November 2026
Artist Birke Gorm represents Austria at the 16th Gwangju Biennale in 2026. Under the title the evening and the morning and the night, she transforms the upper floor of Gwangju’s Eunam Museum of Art both physically and conceptually into an attic—a storage place, full of latent energies, largely left undisturbed. The exhibition is curated by Attilia Fattori Franchini and marks the second national presentation by Austria at the Gwangju Biennale. In her artistic practice, Birke Gorm investigates the life cycle of everyday objects. Through collecting, reusing, and reinterpreting materials, she examines how objects carry, lose, or reshape meaning. In doing so, she interrogates the ideological frameworks around the narration of history and evolving attitudes toward social representation, gender, industrialisation, and value. The works in the Austrian Pavilion reveal hidden narratives while also pointing to processes of survival, upheaval, and reclaiming.
The attic functions as a central motif. As a place where old, forgotten, or hidden objects are stored, where things appear static, fixed, or asleep, yet reveal a life of their own when unobserved. Regarded as the mind of the house, it mirrors its residents’ emotional states, symbolizing the mind’s storage and rediscovery of repressed memories, unprocessed emotions, and the societal forces that linger beneath the surface and shape identity. In this realm of the hidden, the often-overlooked stories—especially those of women, who are frequently marginalized—are brought to the foreground as sources of resistance and resilience.
At the center of the exhibition in the Austrian Pavilion is a series of new figurative sculptures that expand the artist’s existing body of work. These ambiguous bodies—exhausted, determined, lazy, stubborn, relaxed, protective, defensive, on a break, or on strike—are primarily composed of discarded and repurposed materials collected in Vienna and on-site in Gwangju. They are placed, piled, or arranged together, coexisting by coincidence, will, or force to form a complex topography that invites viewers to observe, linger, and discover.
An ever-changing lighting choreography and a subtle soundscape composed of synthetic and everyday sounds shift the space between day and night, creating a mise-en-scène that probes the threshold between labor and rest, productivity and leisure. Within this dynamic, the attic no longer appears as a static storage space, but as a living, continuously transforming environment.
A series of workshops in collaboration with local practitioners will unfold throughout the exhibition and investigate the use of language in relation to the act of gathering and collecting. The Austrian Pavilion is commissioned by Phileas - The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art and co-financed by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media, and Sport. Additional support is provided by the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs. Alongside the Austrian Pavilion, the Eunam Museum of Art will also host the Swiss Pavilion, commissioned by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, which will present an exhibition by Denise Bertschi curated by Claire Hoffmann and Tadeo Kohan.