Shanghai Biennale Proposes ‘Wet-togetherness’ for Post-COVID Show

More time will be spent collaborating with existing online and offline communities than exhibiting works at the Power Station of Art.

The Power Station of Art (PSA) has announced the theme, structure, and curatorial team of the 13th Shanghai Biennale, which will take place from November 2020 until June 2021.

Entitled Bodies of Water, the biennale will play out in three phases: a summit from 10–14 November 2020; associations with streaming TV channels, social media, university programmes and other communities from 15 November 2020–9 April 2021; and an exhibition at the PSA and across Shanghai from 10 April–27 June 2021.

'This exhibition is utterly experimental,' said Fei Dawei, president of the PSA Academic Committee, who selected Andrés Jaque as Chief Curator of the biennale late last year. 'In the face of changing global conditions, curatorial practices will continue to explore the possibilities of self-renewal,' he said.

'From the depth and tempo of a breath to the evolution of an ecosystem, the biennale will reflect on how collectivities are made tangible and bodied in wet-togetherness, exploring diverting forms of aqueousness,' said Jaque. 'Beyond the confines of flesh and land, the curatorial proposal considers how discharging, breathing, transfusing, flushing, and decomposing are ways in which bodies exist together.'

Jaque developed the theme and structure of the biennale alongside a curatorial team consisting of: Marina Otero Verzier, director of research at the Het Nieuwe Instituut; You Mi, curator and researcher at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne; Lucia Pietroiusti, curator of General Ecology at the Serpentine Galleries in London; and Filipa Ramos, curator of Art Basel film and lecturer at Central Saint Martins and Basel's Institut Kunst. —[O]