10,000 Lives, the 8th Gwangju Biennale presents a sprawling investigation of the relationships that bind people to images and images to people. With works by 134 artists—realized between 1901 and 2010, as well as several new commissions—the exhibition is configured as a temporary museum that brings together artworks and cultural artifacts to examine our obsession with images.

The exhibition title is borrowed from Maninbo (10,000 Lives), the 30 volume epic poem by Korean author Ko Un. Conceived while Ko was in prison for his participation in the 1980 South Korean democratic movement, Maninbo comprises over 4,000 portraits in words, describing every person Ko Un has ever met, including figures from history and literature.

Encompassing a diverse range of media, the exhibition 10,000 Lives presents a series of case studies that explore our love for images and our need to create substitutes, effigies, and stands-in for ourselves and our loved ones. The exhibition unfolds as a gallery of portraits or as a dysfunctional family album. It tells the story of people through the images they create and the images they leave behind, but it also follows the lives of images themselves, tracing their endless metamorphoses, from funerary statue to commercial propaganda, from religious icon to scientific tool, from a mirror of ourselves to a projection of our desires.

Along with the work of contemporary artists, the exhibition includes historical works, found photographs, and cultural artifacts that exemplify the multifaceted existence of images, placing them within a wider cultural context and, at times, blurring the line between documents, relics, and art works.