Taipei Biennial Announces 'Planetarium' of Participating Artists
Curators said each artist would have their own pull of gravity in the exhibition.
Hicham Berrada, Présage (2017). Video. Courtesy the artist and Taipei Biennale.
The Taipei Fine Arts Museum has announced the 39 artists taking part in the 12th Taipei Biennial, now scheduled for 21 November 2020–14 March 2021. The exhibition's start date was pushed back from October due to COVID-19.
Entitled You and I Don't Live on the Same Planet, the Biennial is being curated by Bruno Latour and Martin Guinard, who have collaborated on four international projects over the past four years, including 2016's Reset Modernity! at Zentrum für Kunst und Media, Karlsruhe, where Latour is a fellow and Guinard is a guest curator.
The curators describe the exhibition as a planetarium, with each artist having their own 'pull of gravity'. These include artists of the 'Planet TERRESTRIAL', such as indigenous Taiwanese (or Paiwan) artist Aruwai Kaumakan, who used weaving to bring together her village after Typhoon Morakot, and artists of the 'Planet GLOBALIZATION', such as Mexican artist Antonio Vega Macotela, who worked with craftsmen and hackers to encrypt information about tax evaders in large tapestries.
They argue that because our understandings of the world are now so divergent, attempts to unify us, looking back from the moon at the small blue planet we share, have actually slowed down action on ecological issues.
'What is needed now is a real-politic which actually takes seriously the ecological implications of the ground on which it stands,' they said.
In the absence of consensus, they believe we should nevertheless undertake diplomatic encounters in order to make progress.
'In the fictional space of the exhibition, we wish to multiply those encounters to mimic what would be needed in the real world,' Latour added.
One platform for diplomatic encounters is the Theatre of Negotiations, part of the Biennial's public programme led by curator Eva Lin. Developed with scholars and students from the Taiwan Science, Technology and Society (STS) Association, participants will role-play as stakeholders in controversies that have occurred in Taiwanese society, negotiating according to their agendas in a performance akin to War Games or a student United Nations.
The full list of participating artists follows below. —[O]
Taipei Biennial 2020 Participants
Aruwai Kaumakan
Erika Balsom and Grégory Castéra (Council), with Daniel Steegman Mangrané
June Ballthazard and Pierre Pauze
Hicham Berrada
Cemelesai Dakivali
Chang Yung-Ta
Chen Yin-Ju
Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe)
Em'kal Eyongakpa
Fablab Dynamic
Anne-Charlotte Finel
Jean-Michel Frodon and Rasha Salti
Femke Herregraven
DJ Hatfield
Hamedine Kane and Stéphane Verlet-Bottéro with the help of Olivia Anani, Lou Mo and Nathalie Muchamad
Jean Katambayi Mukendi
Navine G. Khan-Dossos
Franck Leibovici and Julien Seroussi
Antonio Vega Macotela
Marianne Morild
Fernando Palma Rodriguez
Jonas Staal
Su Yu Hsin
Territorial Agency (John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi Rönnskog)
Theater of Negotiations
Hsin-hsing Chen
Wen Ling Hong
Paul Jobin
Yi-Ping Lin
Wenling Tu
Chia Ling Wu
Shashank Keshavmurthy
