(Deutsche Welle Chinese website) According to a statement from Taiwan's Ministry of Culture, the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts) will participate in the exhibition under the name "Taiwan Pavilion". After review, the organizer notified the exhibition by letter and signed a contract in April. All subsequent preparations will be conducted under the name "Taiwan Pavilion". However, without prior notice, the organizers suddenly changed the name of the Taiwan Pavilion to the English abbreviation "NTMoFA" of the National Museum of Fine Arts in June. This name was also used when the official key visual was announced in August.
The National American Pavilion has made representations to the organizers many times to strongly protest against the change of the name of the "Taiwan Pavilion". Taiwan's Ministry of Culture has also continued to express Taiwan's position through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Taiwan Representative Office in South Korea to the Gwangju City Government and the organizer, but has received no response.
According to the "Korean Peninsula News Platform", an independent media in South Korea, the organizer of the Gwangju Biennale has a different statement from Taiwan's Ministry of Culture. The organizer claimed that if you participate in the exhibition under the name of a country, you must submit a formal approval document from the embassy or cultural department. However, the National Museum of Fine Arts signed the exhibition agreement as an "institutional participant", so it was marked with the name of the institution. This statement was said by Taiwan's Ministry of Culture to be "obviously wrong."
Ten curators and participating artists from Taiwan issued a statement, condemning the organizers for "forcibly erasing Taiwan from the posters", which is tantamount to political censorship of art exhibitions. “We believe that the Biennale, which takes democracy, human rights and the spirit of Gwangju as its historical foundation, should have the responsibility to explain why the self-naming of participants must be politically restricted.”
Central News Agency reported that Zhang Wenxuan, one of the artists representing the "Taiwan Pavilion", said that the "censorship" action of changing the name of the Gwangju Biennale will shake its credibility in the global art world. The Korean art group “Artists’ Solidarity Against Censorship” also issued a statement on the 18th, stating that artists should have the right to name their own identities, “and artistic practices based on this self-identity should also be respected.”
The Taiwan Visual Arts Association criticized the organizer's move as a "betrayal of the spirit of democracy"; the Gwangju Biennale Foundation ignored the artist's naming based on his own national identity and excluded democratic discussion and consultation procedures, which amounted to "anti-democracy." Several art organizations issued statements calling on the Gwangju Biennale Foundation to explain the decision-making process, legal basis and sources of pressure for the name change, and to apologize to the Taiwan Pavilion curators and artists for this matter.
The Gwangju Biennale was established in 1995 with the purpose of commemorating the spirit of resisting authoritarianism and striving for democracy in South Korea's "Gwangju Democratic Movement" in 1980.
