Officials at the Shanghai Biennale have tapped Anton Vidokle, a Russian American artist and the founder of the art journal e-flux, to curate the fourteenth iteration of the Shanghai Biennale, slated to take place November 9, 2023–March 31, 2024 at the Power Station of Art. The New York–based Vidokle is known for his interest in cosmism: With Arseny Zhilyaev, he cofounded the Institute of the Cosmos, an online publication and an open archive of research devoted to the topic. Vidoke in a statement revealed that the forthcoming Biennale will “reflect on how artists have advanced our understanding of the relationship between life on earth and the cosmos that nourishes and conditions it.” He further noted that “Shanghai is uniquely suited for such a project because of China’s rich history of philosophical and artistic engagement with the cosmological, the city’s cosmopolitan history as a connecting point of East Asia to the world.”
The Moscow-born Vidokle was introduced to cosmism in 2012 through conversations with Boris Groys and Ilya Kabakov. He has since made seven short films based on the work of cosmist authors including Nikolai Fedorov, Vasily Chekrygin, Valerian Muraviov, Aleksandr Svyatogor, and Vladimir Vernadsky. As well, he has written extensively on the subject and facilitated the translation to English and subsequent publication of a number of historical texts on the topic. Vidokle has participated in various iterations of documenta, the Venice Biennale, the Shanghai Biennale, the Gwangju Biennale, the Taipei Biennale, and the Yokohama Triennale; his work has been shown at institutions including the National Gallery, Washington, DC; Tate Modern, London; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Antwerp; the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; and the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.