For this year’s edition of the Busan Biennale, artistic director Haeju Kim offered a deeply considered and elegantly curated exhibition that spoke both to local histories specific to the southern city and wider transnational concerns. Titled “물결 위 우리” (We, on the Rising Wave), the biennial brought together sixty-four artists and collectives across four venues: the Museum of Contemporary Art, Busan; Pier 1 of Busan Port; an abandoned factory on Yeongdo Island; and a house in Choryang-dong in the Dong district. The works were linked by subjects including labor, population movement, and the history of the city; the artists in the show were almost all women. It might at first glance seem obvious to devise a port city biennial around the idea of the sea?and indeed there were perhaps a few too many fishing nets on view?but Kim managed to consistently steer us away from the banal with an exhibition that quietly challenged national histories and patriarchal narratives.