What roles do artists play in creative city-making? This chapter examines the tensions between the cultural policies of the national and city governments and local artists in Gwangju and Incheon. Through interviews and participant observation of the Gwangju Biennale as well as the Incheon Art Platform emerged a picture of two cities’ focus on economic growth. Interviews with artists, government officials, and art experts offered different perspectives on the Gwangju Biennale. Some saw it as compensation for a tragic history and an opportunity to move past that to urban regeneration. However, local artists and the city’s civil society disagreed and staged an alternative Biennale, an Anti-Biennale, as a form of non-verbal communication protest. In Incheon, local artists that supported the alternative art space movement objected to the Incheon Art Platform’s instrumentalisation of its residency artists for the urban economy. In both cases, artists were engaged in the cultural politics, criticising how art and artists are positioned in the creative city-making. The findings suggest that though structure is required for creative city-making, the creative side should quite possibly be left to the artists.