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After the spread of globalism, large art events, concurrently held across the world in the size of the international biennale, have been playing a role of spreading international and universal contemporary art. However, a new flow, focusing on “Asianness”, has been recently formed in Asia and gaining great attention. This flow reflects the state of Asia, raised as the important issue in the global context, based on the rapid growth of Asia with China as the center in recent years. There have been diverse movements, concerning cotemporary art with the title of Asia recently, including Asia Pacific Triennial held in Brisbane, Australia, since 2009, Asian Art Biennial held at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan, since 2011 and the complex cultural art institution, Asia Culture Center, opened in Gwangju, Korea, at the end of November this year after ten years of preparation. The 1st Asia Biennial and the 5th Guangzhou Triennial, organized by the Guangdong Museum of Art in China and opened 11 December 2015, are also held in this flow. The biennale is composed of two parts, the exhibition and symposium. The museum has progressed numerous international conferences and seminars to examine the appropriateness of the Asian Biennial and strengthen the discursive foundation since 2013. This event, focusing on “Asia time”, suggests the contrasting concept of “the West time”, standing for the world time, which can be understood as the Oriental contemplation and the aesthetic of slowing down, contrasted to the aesthetic of the Western speed and the linear notion of development, and the wisdom of non-evolutionary retrospect. However, many scholars and curators, participating in this event, agreed that Asia time should not emphasize Asia’s own timing but has to be understood in the close correlation to the world time.The biennale was curated by Zhang Qing (Head of the Curatorial and Research Department of the National Art Museum of China, Beijing) and Henk Slager(Dean of MaHKU and Research Professor, University of the Arts, Utrecht, The Netherlands), with the assistence of Hong-hee Kim(Director of Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul), Ute Meta Bauer(Founding Director of CCA, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore). Sarah Wilson(Professor of Courtauld Institute, London) and Sun Ge(Researcher, Institute of Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing) have taken charge of the symposium planning.Henk Slager presents diverse works, showing examinations on timing itself beyond where artists come from weather it is Asia or the West, by focusing on the relation of the global and Asia times. The installation work Calendar Series, replacing photos of the front and ending articles in newspaper to images of natural sceneries and using various everyday supplies, by Sarah Sze, currently living and working in New York, especially throws a question about recognizing and measuring time and space in the exhibition. Zhang Qing shows a possibility of Chinese contemporary art, having quickly leapt in the rapid change, with artists like Big Dipper Group and PEI Youngmei, actively working in today’s Chinese art world, as the center. Ute Meta Bauer chooses to focus on performances. Her program is containing the history and various moments of Asia by a team of five artists, and plans to show in the closing ceremony of the event. Hong-hee Kim categorizes Asia and a woman as invisible subjects, not recorded in the Western history and the patriarchal cultures, and shows the reinterpretation of Asia’s feminism by catching the subversive power in the vague characteristic of them. Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, best known for the installation, weaving daily materials with skeins of thread in the air, especially presents the film work Wall, showing a female body surrounded by veins, tangled like capillary vessels, for this exhibition. If the previous concept of a wall means a barrier, dividing and blocking diverse relationships including inside and outside and the past and the present, the artist suggests another concept that intimately connects and circulates segregated relationships. Korean artist Kyungah Ham has received great attention by showing the work, formed with interviews of North Korean defectors about their experiences of cultural differences, through the most famous painting Mona Lisa in Western art history. Moreover, the work of Mona Lisa, embroidered by North Korean artisans, and the moving portraits of North Korean defectors, wearing classical costumes of the West, on the wall side by side make audiences recall people’s different individuality under communism, restricting many things, in the fact that even artisans, trained to repeat same techniques, expressed different images of Mona Lisa. Meanwhile, it is unfortunate that the biennale has not been free from Chinese censorship law. The work of Korean artist Geumhyung Jeong Fitness Guide, deconstructing the accepted notion of sex through preposterous performances, reminding one’s sexual intercourse with daily objects, could not be held because it was judged to be indecent so its installation and film have been installed only.Moreover, the project by Dutch artist and an adoptee from Korea, Sara Van Der Heide, The German Library and Information Centre Pyongyang, has to be quietly opened without proper public relations. This is because the sponsor was concerned about the relationships between South and North Korea and China and North Korea. The artist has transformed Goethe-Institute of Guangzhou, located on the third floor of Sun Yat-sen Library, into Goethe-Institute of Pyongyang during the exhibition period. She showed index cards of books, used by the head of Goethe-Institute of Pyongyang, opened in 2004 and closed in 2009 from the pressure of the North Korean government, the exchanged documents of the interregnum of East Germany, Erich Honecker, and Kim Il Sung, and the name cards of 169 Goethe-Institutes across the world with addresses written on while introducing ten other artists, dealing with relating subjects including the division, unification and borders of South and North Korea. During the opening Luo Yiping, the director of the Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, introduced the First Asian Biennial as “A biennale, interpreting Asia’s historical experiences and the reality of politics in the viewpoint of Asia, is necessary in the time when the West has been leading the discussion of contemporary art.” Asia does not fall into a geographical category or function as the political concept against the West anymore. If one cursorily approach Asia as a slogan, it would be just an imagery community. However, research on Asia can be a meaningful move in regard to the points that Asia, sharing the common history and cultural experiences, draws voluntary voices, agonizes over diverse values of Asia and seeks solidarity together. Seulbi Lee is Editor for Wolganmisool, Monthly art magazine in South Korea1st Asia Biennial / 5th Guangzhou TriennialGuangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou (China)11 December 2015 – 10 April 2016