Amal Khalaf and Evelyn Simons to Curate 2026 Busan Biennale
144July 22, 2025
TheBusan BiennaleOrganizing Committee has named Amal Khalaf and Evelyn Simons co-artistic directors of the next Busan Biennale, to open in September 2026. The pair were selected following an open call.
A founding member of the GCC artist collective, the London-based Khalaf is director of programs at artist-run cooperative Cubitt, having served in that capacity since 2019, and projects curator at Serpentine Galleries. She has worked on the Serpentine’s Edgware Road Project, which connects local and international artists with residents of the neighborhood surrounding the galleries, since the initiative’s 2009 inception. She cocurated the Sharjah Biennial 16 earlier this year; organized the Bahrain pavilion at the Fifty-Eighth Venice Biennale in 2019; and co-directed the tenth edition of the Global Art Forum, Art Dubai, in 2016.
Simons, who is based in Brussels, is an independent curator and a cofounder of the forthcoming RendezVous—Brussels Art Week. She is currently at work on a permanent commission by Aline Bouvy for Ancienne Belgique, Brussels. Her most recent exhibition, “These Branching Moments,” is on view at Fotomuseum Antwerp through September 28. She served as artistic director and curator for the visual arts and performance program at Horst Arts & Music from 2019 to 2023.
Taking place at the Busan Museum of Contemporary Art as well as at various indoor and outdoor locations in the Korean port city, the 2026 Busan Biennale will center around the theme “Dissident Chorus,” as outlined by Khalaf and Simons. Joon Lee, executive director of the Biennale organizing committee in a statement noted that the pair’s proposal “received strong support from the jury for offering five artistic practices that examine the world with a fresh, unique lens—through memory, empathy, healing, resistance, and solidarity, all of which will be mediated by the body, sound, and water. Given their emphasis on community engagement and collaborative practices,” Lee said, “we will fully support the realization of their vision.”