The Gwangju Biennale announced on June 4 that Jeong Yu-seung has been selected as the artist for the "2026 Paris Cité Residency."
This program, co-organized by the Gwangju Biennale Foundation and the Ghana Cultural Foundation, supports the overseas creative activities of contemporary artists based in Gwangju. The foundation conducted a selection process in May and announced the chosen artist.
Jeong Yu-seung, the selected artist for the Paris Cité Residency, focuses on the lives of women who have been marginalized and rendered invisible in society. Her work involves documenting and reconstructing their traces through visual media. Drawing on her experiences as a female artist, she has consistently amplified the voices of those excluded from institutional narratives.
Notable works include the video piece "Day and Night of the Gathering Place" (2018), which explores how a sex work district in Gwangju has changed over time, and "Women of Hwanggeum-dong" (2018), commemorating women who called for solidarity during the Gwangju Uprising in 1980.
The foundation praised Jeong, stating, "She possesses a clear artistic vision and timeliness, aiming to expand her solid research outcomes rooted in the local context to global themes such as climate crisis and gender labor. Her previous works have transcended mere documentation, transforming the sensory experiences and language of marginalized groups into dense visual language through video and objects, thereby establishing a unique artistic world." They added, "Her research plan to trace the life stories and labor of female farmers in the outskirts of Paris under the theme of climate crisis is both concrete and challenging. Her artistic ambition to publicize Gwangju's voice within an international network through local exchanges was highly regarded in this selection process."
The selected artist will reside at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris from October 2 to December 28, 2026, for approximately three months to pursue her creative activities. The Cité Internationale des Arts has been a hub for artists since the 1940s, with a total of 325 studios located in the Marais district and Montmartre, hosting over 1,000 artists annually for creative and exchange activities.
Yoon Beom-mo, the director of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation, stated, "This project is a meaningful initiative for supporting the creative work of Gwangju artists and fostering international exchange. We hope that the residency in Paris will broaden the creative horizons of the selected artist and serve as a great opportunity to promote Gwangju's contemporary art to the world."
* This article has been translated by AI.
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