Taipei Biennial 2023 announces the opening week program and highlights

16 October 2023, Taipei –– Organised by Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM), Taipei Biennial 2023, which will take place from 18 November 2023 through 24 March 2024, is pleased to announce special programs for the opening of the 13th edition between 18 and 19 November. Curated by Freya Chou, Reem Shadid, and Brian Kuan Wood, this year’s edition of the Taipei Biennial, titled “Small World”, will feature works from more than 50 international and local artists and musicians, transforming the museum into a space of listening, gathering and improvising.

The Biennial will launch with a two-day opening program on 18 and 19 November 2023, consisting of conversations, live music performances, and listening sessions presented by artists, musicians, and writers from the Biennial. The conversation series of Artist on Artist invites groups of participants to share their work in the exhibition and exchange thoughts on their artistic practices in general including dj sniff, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Samia Halaby, Lai Chih-Sheng, Ellen Pau, Wang Wei, Alexander Provan, alongside special guest Terre Thaemlitz (a.k.a DJ Sprinkles).

Taiwanese artist Li Jiun Yang, together with the band Buddha, Tiger, Dog, will perform as part of his presentation The Psychedelic Spiritual Ceremony, an installation on view in the exhibition that traces his artistic journey over the past few decades. Samia Halaby, a 93 year old New York based Palestinian abstract painter who is recognised as the pioneer of Kinetic Computer Painting, is showing a series of kinetic paintings that she wrote on her Amiga computer since the 80s. The program transformed the keyboard of her computer to a piano keyboard for abstract paintings. The digital paintings are produced through a live performance of her interacting and improvising with other collaborators, and the vivid colour will change along the music melody. During the opening week, Halaby will be doing a live performance on kinetic paintings together with Indonesian artist Julian Abraham (Togar). Additionally, she will engage in a conversation with leading Hong Kong video artist Ellen Pau.

Music and ways of relating to music plays an important role in Taipei Biennial 2023 as a form of cultural energy and performative tension, but also as a counterpoint to the modes of attention and embodiment ascribed to visual art. The Biennial transforms a gallery into a music room, designed by AAU ANASTAS Studio, founded by Palestinian architects Elias and Yousef Anastas. During the opening program, Listening sessions focused on artist-run music labels will take place in the Music Room and invite presenters to share stories, challenges, and most importantly, music from the various artist networks that the labels have nurtured over the years. Participants including Comatonse recordings by DJ Sprinkles, YesNoWave Music by Julian Abrahm ‘Togar’ and Wok the Rock, Ting Shuo Hear Say by Alice Hui-Sheng Chang and Nigel Brown, and Senko Issha Records by Chi-Guang Wang. 

Throughout the exhibition period, the Biennial invited three groups of musicians and sound practitioners, including dj sniff from Los Angeles / Tokyo, Julian Abraham (Togar) & Wok the Rock from Indonesia and Ting Shuo Hear Say from Tainan to host programs dedicated to gathering, recording, jamming, and music programming. From 10 to 16 December, 2023, the Music Room will present its first program ex-DJ with a one-week open studio hosted by dj sniff featuring three experimental turntablists from around the globe: Mariam Rezaei from Newcastle, UK, SlowPitchSound from Toronto, and DJ Rex Chen from Taichung. They will present a series of performances together with dj sniff. Various programs at the Music Room will run through March 2024, and more details will be announced soon.

Highlighted artworks by Taiwanese artists to be revealed for the first time

In addition to the various public and Music Room programs, 19 new works and commissions will be featured at the Biennial, including the new works of artists such as Yang Chi-Chuan, Hsu Tsun-Hsu, and Jen Liu:

Yang Chi-Chuan explores the intimate psychological relationships between people and places, objects, and events. She employs a delicate expression in her sculptures and sound installations and draws on personal experiences and memories to invite viewers on an intimate narrative journey that offers probing questions about our surroundings. Your tears remind me to cry, is a newly commissioned sound installation for the Biennial. The work comprises several sets of ceramic sculptures which are transformed from the imaginary tiny organisms and fear of nightmare, reflecting on struggles with anxiety and fear when they collide with each other and make sound. 

Hsu Tsun-Hsu documented Taiwan’s turbulent social changes and progress as a democracy. The Biennial features The More We Get Together, a collection of photographs Hsu took between 1986 and 1998 during a decade of unpredictable moments and pivotal events in Taiwan. The photographs capture micro moments ranging from the misfit and banal to the macro perspectives towards historic and transformative events. The images exemplify the originality and aptness of Hsu’s gaze as well as his eye for social absurdity. In her research-based work, Taiwanese-American artist Jen Liu fabricates speculative narratives to contest dominant accounts of the past and present. The Land at the Bottom of the Sea (2023) is the last chapter of Pink Slime Caesar Shift, a multi-year body of work in a variety of mediums and new technologies to create alternative networks for overseas female labour activism.

Another highlight is the works of New York based Taiwanese-American artist Arthur Ou that were created during the isolated living experiences and strict confinement of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ou examines the complex mechanism behind image generation in his alone time, his photographs explore the close relationship between pictures and light, reminding oneself to stay curious to the minor things through the innocent lens of children.

Taipei Biennial Supports    

This year, CTBC Foundation for Arts and Culture continues as the lead sponsor of Taipei Biennial. FENG Chi-Tai, chairman of the CTBC Foundation for Arts and Culture, remarks: “Taipei Biennial is an iconic event in the contemporary artworld, it raises the awareness of Taiwanese contemporary art on the international platform and fosters the conversation between Taiwan and the world. Under the theme of “Small World”, the Biennial explores the reconstruction of relations in the post-pandemic world. With contemporary artworks as the medium, we are thrilled to lead and provoke the contemplation of public on the present and future faced by the humankinds in this ever-changing era.”

Special thanks to National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF) and ARTWAVE for their support of Taipei Biennial 2023 and their dedication to connecting arts in Taiwan with the world by hosting international curators and institution directors from America, Netherlands, Korea, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam and more. They established the intercultural international network and fosters the exchange and interaction between the artists and arts practitioners from all over the world.

The Music Room is generously supported by Stephen Cheng. And special thanks to AUSPIC PAPER to support the opening event.

For more and latest information on the participating artists, the opening programs, please visit the Taipei Biennial 2023 official website (https://www.taipeibiennial.org/2023), or follow us on Facebook and Instagram (Taipei Fine Arts Museum).

Freya Chou

Freya Chou is a curator based in Hong Kong and Taipei. Chou is a member of the 58th Carnegie International’s Curatorial Council and the Guest Curator of Hong Kong’s participation in the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. From 2008–2014, she was in the curatorial team for the 6th and 7th Taipei Biennial (2008, 2010) and Co-Curator of the 10th Shanghai Biennial (2014). From 2015–2019, she worked at Para Site in Hong Kong as the institution’s first Education and Public Programs Curator, during those four years she also curated exhibitions: Ellen Pau: What About Home Affairs? - A Retrospective (2018), Chris Evans, Pak Sheung Chuen: Two Exhibitions (2017), and Afterwork (co-curator, 2016). Recently, Chou has worked with several organizations on research projects, she has also edited and contributed writing to many artist books, magazines, and exhibition catalogues.           

Reem Shadid

Reem Shadid is a curator, researcher, and cultural organizer who works on the emancipatory possibilities within artistic practice, exploring the ways it intersects with ecological, political, and socio-economic forms. Currently, she is the Director of Beirut Art Center in Lebanon and is a co-curator for the second edition of New Visions (2023), the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter triennial for photography and New Media. Shadid is also a contributing editor with Infrasonica, a digital platform of non-western cultures for experimental sound and visual art practices and is the producer and host of Radio Alhara’s show Listening with Reem Shadid; listening sessions with artists and practitioners working at the intersection of sonic, visual and literary productions. Most recently she directed Berlin Biennale (2022) Curator’s workshop, and was the producer and host of Aridity Lines, a podcast on local ecological knowledge and climate change in the south-eastern Mediterranean region commissioned by TBA21 Academy. Previously she was the Deputy Director of Sharjah Art Foundation, where she served in various capacities between 2006–2020.  

Brian Kuan Wood

Brian Kuan Wood is a writer based in New York, and an editor of e-flux’s book series and monthly journal. He has taught and lectured at the MA Curatorial Practice program at the School of Visual Arts in New York (where he was Director of Research from 2017 to 2022), Ashkal Alwan in Beirut, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Para Site in Hong Kong, Inside Out Museum in Beijing, and China Art Academy in Hangzhou, among other places. He recently edited Natascha Sadr Haghighian’s relearning bearing witness (2021), Yuk Hui’s Art and Cosmotechnics (2021), as well as the 2017 Sharjah Biennial publication Tamawuj (with Amal Issa, Omar Berrada, and Kaelen Wilson-Goldie), the Taipei Biennial 2012 catalog Modern Monsters: Death and Life of Fiction (with Anselm Franke), and Selected Maria Lind Writing (2010).

Taipei Biennial

Being one of the most long-standing biennials in Asia, the Taipei Biennial held by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum has endeavored in driving Taiwanese contemporary art development since it was launched in 1998, facilitating a platform of interaction and exchange between local and international communities through its vigorous engagement informed by diversely cultural perspectives in Asian and global contemporary art networks. Through the multi-directional communication of exhibition mechanism, the biennial aims to proactively lead in discussions and respond to contemporary issues, encompassing global perspectives and regional individuality. In the recent editions, experts and professionals from various disciplines have been invited to participate in the biennial with the objective to spark and introduce multifacetedness of art, while engendering the energy of different artistic dimensions. https://www.taipeibiennial.org/

Taipei Fine Arts Museum

Established in 1983 in response to a burgeoning modern art movement, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) is Taiwan’s first museum of modern and contemporary art. Since its inception, the museum has shouldered its mission dedicated to the preservation, research, development and advocacy of modern art in Taiwan, while staying abreast of cultural productions that arise in the context of an expanding global contemporary art scene. TFAM has been participating in Venice Biennale since 1995 and has been hosting the Taipei Biennial since 1998, inviting renowned international and local curators and artists to participate in the exhibition. www.tfam.museum

CTBC Foundation for Arts and Culture

In 1996, the CTBC Foundation for Arts and Culture was established to stimulate the art and cultural environment in Taiwan and elevate cultural literacy among the general public. In earlier years, the foundation focused on theater operations. In 2015, it underwent a transformation and initiated a three-pronged approach to promote visual arts, supporting performance arts, and fostering arts and culture education. The foundation organizes the CTBC Arts Festival annually, to promote performance art between global and local communities. It also hosts Dreams Initiatives Project, inviting artists as mentor to conduct workshops at schools in rural areas, bridging the gap by making arts resources accessible to all cities and towns in Taiwan. Starting from 2021, the foundation holds the CTBC Painting Prize biennially, the only award focusing on contemporary painting in Taiwan. It encourages young artists to explore their creativity with contemporary approaches and support unique and innovative voices. Affirming the Biennial’s positive influence on society, CTBC Foundation for Arts and Culture sponsored the Taipei Biennial 2020, and will continue to be the lead sponsor of the Taipei Biennial 2023. https://www.ctbcculture.org/w/CTBC/Index

Stephen Cheng

Stephen Cheng’s passion for art and culture has made a remarkable contribution to the development of arts and education over the years. He serves on the board of Artists Space in New York and also as a trustee for the YK Pao Education Foundation, Friends of the Hong Kong Museum of Art Trust, and The Ink Society. In 2015, Mr. Cheng founded Empty Gallery, a contemporary art space and venue in Hong Kong. The gallery showcases both established and emerging artists, and features a program of multimedia commissions, exhibitions, and live performances in music and the arts.

National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF) and ARTWAVE

Launched by the National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF), ARTWAVE-Taiwan International Arts Network is a global online platform for the connection between the Taiwanese art world and the world.

The NCAF was founded in 1996 for the purpose of actively leading, supporting and fostering an ideal environment for the development of culture and arts. In 2018, ARTWAVE-Taiwan International Arts Network is founded. The NCAF has been effectively deepening the mutual learning about the current development of arts and culture between Taiwan and other countries, and has also proposed initiatives and topics of common interests for further discussion and exploration to increase exchange and collaboration between artists and other art professionals. https://artwave.ncafroc.org.tw/

AUSPIC PAPER

Auspic Paper was founded in 1977, with a belief that paper as a medium is a shifting form throughout the times, that in order for a work/product to truly stand out, the interrelationship between paper and different creative expressions must be taken into consideration. Dedicated to nurturing the culture of paper in Taiwan, Auspic provides a variety of paper that caters to users, while introducing the latest technology from domestic and overseas manufacturers, in an attempt to explore fresh possibilities of paper through eclectic projects and collaborations as we move ahead.https://www.paper.com.tw/

For the full list of sponsors and supporters for Taipei Biennial 2023, please visit the official website (https://www.taipeibiennial.org/2023).