Taipei Biennial is pleased to unveil the full participating list of artists for its 13th edition, running from November 18, 2023, to March 24, 2024, at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM). Curated by curator Freya Chou, writer and editor Brian Kuan Wood, and curator Reem Shadid, this year’s iteration will bring together over 50 international and local artists and musicians. Ten new works and commissions as well as installations, performances, and musical and cinematic experiences will transform the museum into a space for listening, gathering, improvising, and exploring.
The title Small World suggests both a promise and a threat: a promise of greater control over one’s own life, and a threat of isolation from a larger community following a global pandemic. Our world can become smaller as we grow closer to one another, but also as we grow apart. This Small World takes place within such a suspended state of being unable to join together but not completely separate.
The small world is a lonely and entitled place that we have lost parts of ourselves and our societies to, but it may also be a place that welcomes strange acts of refusing to scale up or down, to amplify, unplug, move, or stay put. It might lure us towards illusions of impossible permanence and simplicity, towards absolute primacies and intoxicating authenticities that surpass all influences, but it also encourages us to betray the need to translate and be understood, to please others for some eventual benefit that never arrives.
Taipei Biennial 2023 curators Freya Chou, Brian Kuan Wood, and Reem Shadid
Highlights from Taipei Biennial 2023 include:
- Pio Abad’s new commission originated in a research trip to Lanyu, an island in Taiwan that is closely related to the Batanes and Babuyan islands of the northern Philippines, a region native to his Ivatan roots. Abad’s work reflects on the power and ephemerality of both text and soil in a large-scale installation.
- Natascha Sadr Haghighian’s new commission is a multi-channel installation that evokes the sound of disappearance and erasure. Intended as an anti-monument, the work is dedicated to the caretaker — a figure who, in the process of compensating for the frailty of another person, senses their own increasing vulnerability.
- Taiwanese artist Li Yi Fan will present a new work. Employing a format that stands out from mass animation productions and special effect industries, Li creates video performances that are similar to anti-script, impromptu talk shows with his self-made video tools.
- A major figure in Japan’s 1960s avant-garde, Akasegawa Genpei (1937–2014) was a member of influential artist groups Hi-Red Center and Neo-Dada Organizers. Earlier this year, over 40,000 unpublished prints were discovered by Akasegawa’s family, of which the Biennial will present a large selection for the first time in a public museum.
The 13th Taipei Biennial will also transform a gallery at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum into a music room designed by Palestinian architects AAU ANASTAS Studio, founded by Elias and Yousef Anastas. Three groups of musicians and sound practitioners — including dj sniff, Julian Abraham (Togar) & Wok the Rock, and Ting Shuo Hear Say — will host public and semi-public programs dedicated to gathering, recording, jamming, and music programming from December 2023 to March 2024.
Participating Artists and Musicians
Pio Abad (London), Julian Abraham ‘Togar’ & Wok the Rock (Yogyakarta), Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou Rahme (Ramallah/New York), Nadim Abbas (Hong Kong), Genpei Akasegawa (1937–2014), Edgar Arceneaux (Los Angeles), Tekla Aslanishvili (Berlin/Tbilisi), Huguette Caland (1931–2019), Yin-Ju Chen (Taipei), Chen Ching-Yuan (Taipei), dj sniff (San Francisco/Tokyo), Nikita Gale (Los Angeles), Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze (Berlin), Samia Halaby (New York), Ting Shuo Hear Say (Tainan), Hide & Seek Audiovisual Art (Taipei), Hsu Tsun-Hsu (Taipei), Takashi Ito (Fukuoka), Kim Beom (Seoul), Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork (Los Angeles), Nesrine Khodr (Beirut), Patricia L. Boyd (London), Lai Chih-Sheng (Taipei), Li Yi-Fan (Taipei), Kim Lim (1936–1997), Li Jun-Yang (Taichung), Jen Liu (New York), Jumana Manna (Berlin), Basim Magdy (Basel), Wietske Maas (Berlin), I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih (1966–2006), Artemio Narro (Mexico City), Bahar Noorizadeh (London), Aditya Novali (Surakarta), Ipeh Nur (Yogyakarta), Arthur Ou (New York), Ellen Pau (Hong Kong), Riar Rizaldi (Yogyakarta), Natascha Sadr Haghighian (Berlin/Tehran), Massinissa Selmani (Tours/Tizi-Ouzou), Seher Shah (Barcelona), Hema Shironi (Colombo), John Smith (London), So Wing-Po (Hong Kong), Lara Tabet (Beirut/Marseille), Wang Wei (Beijing), Raed Yassin (Berlin/Beirut), Yang Chi-Chuan (Taipei), Yang Yooyun (Seoul), C. Spencer Yeh (New York), Zhou Tao (Guangzhou)