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The 2021 Jinju Traditional Craft Biennale will be held for the first time in Jinju, a UNESCO creative city in the field of crafts and folk arts. The main theme of it is “Law of Traditional Crafts”. There exist unique orders, rules, or other invisible patterns and forms that are implicitly transmitted in traditional art. Crafts are always by our side, and we implicitly share their use and lead our lives with them. Based on the historical and temporal nature of tradition, crafts have always been in pursuit of new changes in their use and have been developed creatively.

In order to discuss the law of traditional crafts, we would like to examine the consilience of crafts through the works of Eastern and Western craft artists. The international exchange artist exhibition will display the works by leading craftsmen in South Korea as well as craftsmen from other UNESCO creative cities, in an effort to explore the consilience of the most basic rules in craft that transcends regional boundaries. The intentionality of tradition exhibition, which seeks to examine the orientation of creative crafts based on the consilience of crafts laws, allows us to get a sense of contemporary creativity of crafts through the works by South Korean senior craft artists that present the rules of traditional crafts and orientation of creation.

The balanced expression of consilience and intentionality will be examined in the works of Somok and Duseok, both of which are the representative crafts of Jinju. Particularly, the works of Somok are based on the accumulation of history and culture of the region as well as its rich natural geography, and can be finished only after following the time of heaven and waiting for the reasoning of nature. They give the meaning of equilibrium of Jinju, and allow us to appreciate its beauty once again.

In essence, creative crafts that create the balanced world though consilience and intentionality will shine with the Jinju Traditional Craft Biennale.