CHEONGJU, South Korea, Sept. 3, 2025 -- The Cheongju Craft Biennale 2025 will embark on a 60-day journey beginning with the opening ceremony September 4.
Featuring works by 1,300 artists from 72 countries and totaling more than 2,500 pieces. This Biennale proclaims itself unprecedented in scale. True to its theme, "Re_Crafting Tomorrow" the Biennale builds on craft, which is rooted in the fundamental acts of cooking, clothing, and shelter that have shaped human life, as its cornerstone. It integrates art, design, and architecture; connects human beings, nature, and objects; and raises questions about the earth's future in collaboration with communities, stacking these concerns into a structural and lucid narrative of craft's new identity and potential.
- Main Exhibition - Re_Crafting Tomorrow
In this digital age of image saturation and speed, in a time of impoverished abundance where expensive luxury goods coexist with disposables, in an era where development and growth themselves trigger disaster, and where consumption only multiplies waste and intensifies human guilt—what can craft do? The main exhibition of the Cheongju Craft Biennale 2025 embodies precisely this question. Artistic Director Kang Jae-young stated, "This exhibition shows how universal craft, which began as indispensable items for human survival, evolves through aestheticism to become craft for all beings and ultimately craft with communities. This Biennale is a site where craft generates a new civilization through the act of 'making together and sharing together.'"
- Invited Country Exhibition Thailand
Another reason not to miss this Biennale is the Invited Country Exhibition. For the first time in Biennale history, a single Asian country has been invited as a solo guest nation: Thailand. The exhibition is curated by Gridthiya Gaweewong, Artistic Director and recipient of the 2025 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence from Bard College, an honor awarded to the most pioneering and innovative curators in the global art world. Entitled "Living in an Elastic Time", the exhibition highlights Thailand's crafts, which have preserved their unique culture and spirit despite the pressures of speed and commercialization. It is composed of 3 sections of 'Creating without Time limits', 'Techno-Craft', and 'Time is the True Home of the Mind'. And the 'Thai Culture Week' held September 9–14, are additional highlights not to be missed.
The Cheongju Craft Biennale 2025 will run for 60 days, from September 4, to November 2, at the Culture Factory and across Cheongju.
