“2024 Asian Art Biennial” organized by National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMoFA) will open this November, and NTMoFA announces the curatorial team this month (March 7th, 2024). This year’s Biennial will carry on the previous edition’s model that centered on an international curatorial team. Taiwanese independent curator Fang Yen Hsiang will assume the role of convener, and four international curators are invited to join the curatorial team, including Anne Davidian from Armenia, Merv Espina from the Philippines, Haeju Kim from South Korea, and Asli Seven, who works in Turkey and France. This edition will further emphasize the Biennial as a platform to experiment with the process of assembly, shaping public agendas, and presenting critical and reflective viewpoints.
According to Director Chen Kuang-yi of NTMoFA, Asian Art Biennial was originally going to be held last year, but has been re-scheduled to this year due to the pandemic. As the global pandemic has come to an end, Asian Art Biennial will not be just a routine exhibition or cultural event, but an opportunity to reflect on and respond to post-pandemic recovery and rebirth in a world that remains tumultuous. It will also showcase the exhibition’s own evolution, energy, continuation, and regeneration.
In this year’s curatorial team, Fang Yen Hsiang is a Taiwanese independent curator, art critic, and creator. He previously worked at Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, and has long been concerned with the relationship between contemporary artistic practice and social movements. Armenian-born Anne Davidian was the curator of the Pavilion of Armenia at the Venice Biennale in 2022, and the co-editor of What Makes an Assembly? Stories, Experiments, and Inquiries (Sternberg Press, 2022). Philippine artist and researcher Merv Espina is one of the curators of WSK Festival of the Recently Possible, an experimental music and media art festival, founded in 2008, as well as a member of the curatorial team of “Sunshower—Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now.” Korean curator Haeju Kim currently works at the Singapore Art Museum. She served as the Artistic Director of the Busan Biennale 2022, and will be curating the Singapore Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024. Independent curator, researcher, and writer Asli Seven from Turkey is currently a guest lecturer at MoCo ESBA Montpellier in France. She has also been a guest curator at several art museums, including the Odunpazari Modern Museum in Turkey and the Arter Museum in Istanbul. Past editions of Asian Art Biennial mostly invited curators from Southeast Asia or Northeast Asia, but this year’s Biennial also invites two members from Western Asia to join the curatorial team. This diverse team will reach beyond geographic confines to reflect on the territories and definitions of Asia, highlighting the diversity of Asian artistic practices through the team’s connections and international perspectives.
The curatorial team proposes that the 2024 Asian Art Biennial will be launched through collective dialogue, like a continually developing life cycle. The five curators will jointly propose a list of artists and develop expanded projects that are collaborative and in dialogue with various publics. The curatorial team further reveals that the issues of contemporary Asia, including its symbiotic dynamics, future uncertainties, conflicts, and challenges will be addressed. The relationship between humans and non-human worlds as well as the dynamics between locality and the displacement of forms, bodies, labor, and knowledge will be explored from multiple perspectives. The team hopes that this year’s Asian Art Biennial will question the complicated relations between art and life, reassert the power of collective knowledge production and storytelling, while also nurturing shared imaginations for the future, reshaping the biennial into a space of co-existence.
The 2024 Asian Art Biennial is projected to open on November 16, and the five curators will explore new dynamics and trends of the contemporary Asian society and world through artworks and collective actions. Their unique viewpoints run through the entire exhibition to bring audiences a multilayered and inspiring artistic experience. For related information, please visit NTMoFA website (https://www.ntmofa.gov.tw/ ).
2024 Asian Art Biennial
Exhibition Period: November 16, 2024, to February 28, 2025
Exhibition Coordinator:
Hsiao-Yu Lin TEL: + 886 4-2372-3552 ext.304 hylin@art.ntmofa.gov.tw
Media Contact:
May Yan TEL:+ 886 4-23723552 ext. 123 may523@art.ntmofa.gov.tw
National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts
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TEL: + 886 4-2372-3552