Taiwan and the Gwangju Biennale Clash Over the Erasure of a Name

The Gwangju Biennale Foundation has denied censoring Taiwanese artists after renaming their "Taiwan Pavilion" as "NTMoFA" — the acronym of its commissioner, the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts — ahead of the biennial's 16th edition, which opens on 5 September in Gwangju, South Korea.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the foundation called the renaming an "administrative difference concerning participant classification and naming conventions," and said NTMoFA had registered its participation as an institution rather than as a national pavilion (Artnet News). A biennale, for readers unfamiliar with the term, is a large-scale international art exhibition held every two years; pavilions are typically designated by country, in the manner of the Venice Biennale's national pavilions.

Taiwan's Ministry of Culture rejected that account outright. In a press release, it called the foundation's claim that NTMoFA applied as an institution "clearly incorrect," and said it would "not back down" — insisting on participating as the Taiwan Pavilion or taking "necessary actions" if denied (Artnet News). The ministry had already protested the renaming on its official X account on 18 August, stating that Taiwanese artists condemned the decision as political censorship (Ministry of Culture, Taiwan, on X).

The dispute became public on Saturday, 15 August, when the pavilion's curator and artists published a joint statement calling the removal of "Taiwan" from their pavilion name "political censorship" (Focus Taiwan; e-flux). In a separate Instagram statement, the group said Taiwan had been "brutally erased" by the renaming, and that NTMoFA's exhibition proposal had been submitted under the name "Taiwan Pavilion." The artists said the decision to use "NTMoFA" was made unilaterally, ignoring what they described as the museum's "repeated objections and attempts at negotiation" (Artnet News).

Taiwan's government reiterated its protest on 16 August as the artists' objections continued (Taipei Times).

The Gwangju Biennale, founded in 1995 in the city whose name it carries, is one of Asia's most prominent recurring art exhibitions. Pavilion naming carries weight at such events: a national designation signals diplomatic recognition, and the question of whether Taiwan appears under its own name at international cultural platforms has long been politically sensitive, given Beijing's position that Taiwan is part of China.

The exhibition's curator, Chen Hsiang-Wen, did not respond to a request for comment on the foundation's statement (Artnet News). The 16th Gwangju Biennale opens to the public on 5 September.