Running from 18 November 2023 to 24 March 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, transforming the museum into a space of listening, gathering, improvising, and exploring alternative ways to perceive and apply what we learned from the recent pandemic. Ten new works and commissions will be featured at the Biennial, alongside installations, performances, and musical and cinematic experiences that question promises of the simple and sensual amidst increasing tension and complexity.
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 nor completely separate. Through a series of presentations that comprise sound, music, moving images, photography, video, paintings, sculptures and installations, “Small World” presents audiences with the dilemma faced by us and our societies.
The three curators stated that: “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.”
For the full artist list of the 13th Taipei Biennial, please refer to Appendix 1 below.
The full list of participating artists and musicians in alphabetical order with current location:
Pio Abad (London)
Julian Abraham ‘Togar’ & Wok the Rock (Yogyakarta)
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)