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Curators announced for the 2019 Asian Art Biennial in Taichung

  • Date:2019-03-25
Curators announced for the 2019 Asian Art Biennial in Taichung

Curated by Taiwan's Hsu Chia-wei (許家維) and Singapore's Ho Tzu-nyen (何子彥), the 2019 Asian Art Biennial will be staged by the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts this October. The Taichung-based museum's expectations regarding the two artist-curators are threefold:

 

  • To elevate the process of artistic production to new curatorial horizons;
  • To advance research and introduce transdisciplinary curatorial practices through more flexible and adaptive exhibitions and installations;
  • To explore the cultural issues and formal hybridization exclusive to Asian arts from multiple perspectives.

 

Both curators have focused their respective oeuvres on excavating, encrypting, and reconstructing critical events in Asian history. Hsu's artistic practice revolves around Asian history in the Cold War era and the imperceptible agency of images, recounting events beyond the scope of his camera lens and connecting figures, things, and places excluded from official records.

 

Based on rigorous historic research and extensive references from literature, philosophy, and art history, Ho's works intend to inspire alternative narratives and re-imagine Southeast Asian cultures and geopolitics. He also draws upon a riotous profusion of media and vocabulary ranging from film, video, animation, and theater to installation, sound, and text.

 

Against the backdrop of the Anthropocene epoch, the current geological age where human activity has become the dominant influence on world climate and the environment, the 2019 Asian Art Biennial will look at the convergence of the information society, technological issues, and politico-historic propositions.

 

By virtue of its non-human orientation, this biennial will also shake off the shackles of mainstream narratives, insofar as to spark broader imagination and discussion. The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts will host 30 artists and collectives from across Asia to bring this concerted exhibition to fruition.

 

Titled "The Strangers from beyond the Mountain and the Sea," the 2019 biennial will take place from Oct. 5, 2019 through Feb. 9, 2020 in central Taiwan. More information is available at www.asianartbiennial.org