For an optimal view of our website, please rotate your tablet horizontally.
17 November 2018 - 10 March 2019
Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan
Curators: Mali Wu & Francesco Manacorda
List of participants ►
41 participants and participating groups from 19 countries and territories
Co-curated by Mali Wu and Francesco Manacorda with the title Post-Nature — A Museum as an Ecosystem, the 11th edition of the Taipei Biennial focuses on the interconnectivity of ecosystemic structures formed between humans and nature, and aims to serve as a platform for social experimentation, generating new interdisciplinary possibilities for long-lasting, community-driven, bottom-up synergies.
Curatorial statement ►
Taking this title as their starting point, the curators approach the ever-changing nature of an ecosystem to explore how this is reflected in artistic and institutional practice. The exhibition engages with different ecosystemic models, focusing particularly on the significance of reciprocal dependency, and how this form of functioning tends towards a holistic common good. While the exhibition venue, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, acts as the Biennial’s central nervous system, the experimental methodology of this exhibition transforms the museum into a platform for multi-disciplinary discussion, which intends to extend outward and reach multilateral resonance outside of the architectural limits of the museum.
In Post-Nature — A Museum as an Ecosystem, the curators use the exhibition to reconsider the museum as a social model. In the most conventional forms, exhibitions grow quickly, occupy a limited time span, and have little ability to sustain their reach, while museums instead develop slowly and organically, respond carefully to their environments and preserve their own longevity. The curators mention, if too rigidly confined by an architectural and conceptual framework, a museum can become an isolated space for art contemplation, rather than remain open to constant ecosystemic transformation, osmosis and growth. With the curatorial concept and the participating projects responding to it, this biennial aims to investigate how the museum as an institution exists as, and within, a social, cultural, economic and political ecosystem.
The curators have included not only visual artists, but also NGOs, activists, film and documentary makers, architects and other non-visual artists, in a network of interdependent and cross-pollinating positions. By presenting non-traditional creatives in the museum’s galleries, the curators aim to enhance the discussion and the exchange of knowledge, responding to the diversity and possibilities of ecology.
KE Chin-Yuan, 1993 Sever Coastal Erosion Causing the Collapse of a Seaside Fortress at Bali Coast, Taipei, 1993