The Taipei Biennale is pleased to unveil the full list of participating artists for its 13th edition, which will take place from November 18, 2023 to March 24, 2024, at Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM). Organized by curator Freya Chou, writer and editor Brian Kuan Wood and curator Reem Shadid, this year’s edition will bring together more than 50 international and local artists and musicians. Ten new works and commissions as well as installations, performances and musical and film experiences will transform the museum into a space for listening, gathering, improvisation and exploration.
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 as a result of a global pandemic. Our world can become smaller as we get closer to each other, but also as we move further apart. This Small world takes place in such a suspended state of being unable to join but not completely separated.
The small world is a lonely, allowed place in which we have lost parts of ourselves and our societies, but it can also be a place that welcomes strange acts of refusal to increase or decrease, to amplify, unplug, move or stay put. . It can lead us towards illusions of permanence and impossible simplicity, towards absolute primacies and intoxicating authenticity that transcend all influences, but it also encourages us to betray the need to translate and to be understood, to please others in order to a possible benefit that never arrives.
Curators of the 2023 Taipei Biennale Freya Chou, Brian Kuan Wood and Reem Shadid
Highlights of the 2023 Taipei Biennale include:
- Pio Abad’s new commission was born out of a research trip to Lanyu, an island in Taiwan closely related to the Batanes and Babuyan islands of the northern Philippines, a region originating from his Ivatan roots. Abad’s work reflects the power and transience of text and ground in a large-scale installation.
- Natascha Sadr Haghighian’s new commission is a multi-channel installation that evokes the sound of disappearance and erasure. Conceived as an anti-monument, the work is dedicated to the guardian – a figure who, in the process of compensating for another person’s frailty, senses his own growing vulnerability.
- Taiwanese artist Li Yi Fan will present a new work. Using a format that stands out from the mass animation productions and special effects industries, Li creates video performances similar to impromptu anti-script talk shows with her own video tools.
- A major figure in the Japanese avant-garde of the 1960s, Akasegawa Genpei (1937-2014) was a member of the influential artist groups Hi-Red Center and Neo-Dada Organizers. Earlier this year, more than 40,000 previously unseen prints were discovered by Akasegawa’s family, whose Biennale will present a large selection for the first time in a public museum.
The 13th Taipei Biennale will also transform a gallery in the Taipei Fine Arts Museum into a music hall 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 musical 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), 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)
