The Taipei Fine Arts Museum on Friday announced a list of 39 people who are to take part in this year’s Taipei Biennial, scheduled for Nov. 21.
Curated by French sociologist and philosopher Bruno Latour and Paris-based independent curator Martin Guinard, the 12th edition of the exhibition aims to “introduce political and diplomatic tactics into the realm of environmental discussions,” the museum said.
Paiwan artist Aruwai Kaumakan, Mexican artist Antonio Vega Macotela and Moroccan artist Hicham Berrada are among those to be featured in the biennial, titled “You and I Don’t Live on the Same Planet,” it said.
They will be joined by artists Chang Yung-ta (張永達), Huang Hai-hsin (黃海欣), June Balthazard, Pierre Pauze and Daniel Steegmann Mangrane, and London-based duo Cooking Sections, among others, it said.
“It seems that the divisions on ecological questions are so great that disagreements are no longer about differences of ‘vision’ or ‘point of view’ about the world, but a question of ‘the material nature’ of the very planet that we are talking about,” the curators said.
“In this context, the curators hope to trigger what Latour calls ‘new diplomatic encounters,’” the museum said.
“The key feature of a diplomatic encounter is that there is no arbiter, referee or judge who would sit above the situation to decide who is right or wrong about an issue,” the curators said. “In the fictional space of the exhibition, we wish to multiply those encounters to mimic what would be needed in the real world.”
At this year’s biennial, which is being imagined as a “planetarium,” each artist would represent a “pull of gravity,” the museum said, adding that Mt Project founder and director Eva Lin (林怡華) is the curator of the biennial’s public program.
One of the highlights of this year’s program is Theater of Negotiations (協商劇場), a collaborative project with experts and students from the Taiwan Science, Technology and Society Association, it said.
Originally to open in October, the Taipei Biennial was pushed back by a month due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The biennial is now expected to run through March 14 next year.
The Taipei Biennial is the museum’s “most important exhibition,” and a major mechanism for dialogue between Taiwan and the world, it said.
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