Taipei Biennial 2016
Minouk Lim. The Weight of Hands, 2010 video, color, sound, 13 min 50 sec
Entering its 10th edition, the Taipei Biennial (TB16) seems be in the way of losing its competitive edge in Asia with the shift in global and regional paradigms. Curator Corinne Diserens turned the the conversation inward, contributing to the shaping of collective memory through the portrayal of ‘archiving’ or ‘anti-archival’ gestures. Titled “Gestures and Archives of the Present, Genealogies of the Future: A New Lexicon for the Biennial”, the event no longer looked to formulate spectacular grand theories, focusing instead on the critique of ‘mechanisms which shape collective memory’ and ‘the bureaucratic role of Taipei Fine Art Museum’ (TFAM).
TB16 is reminiscent of its 2010 counterpart, where neither aesthetics itself nor the contemporary world was the subject of criticism, but focusing the artistic mechanisms surrounding art. These two editions are also the most difficult to grasp in the history of the Taipei biennial. A large number of lectures, forums, performances, workshops, and screening activities disturb the temporality of static displays, requesting audiences to continually re-visit the museum over the five-month exhibition period to participate in a destructive operation of art form.
More than 80 artists took part in the biennial, with almost half of them being Taiwanese that is a surprise. Actually after 1998, the percentage of participating Taiwanese artists accounted for 8-25%. Since TFAM began to invite internationally-renowned curators to involve the Taipei Biennial as curator or co-curator, the percentage of participating international and local artists has been seen as a sign of the conflict between globalization and localization by Taiwanese art communities. The interesting point is, in Taiwan we all call this sort of biannual exhibition as ‘biennial’ rather than ‘biennale’.
Diserens is keenly critical of the museum - this is her forte. Consequently, she boldly deconstruct the current mechanism: in lieu of conducting research through recommendations, referrals, and short-term field research as with past editions, she also opted for an open call in order to better understand local artist, although this may be her strategy against the inability to understand the art ecology in Taiwan. In any case, she put much effort into establishing direct dialogues with the local community and artists rather than imposing authority over them. This spared her from the Taiwanese community’s essentialist criticism of Westerners.
Diserens’ engagement with African artists made her aware of the paradoxical relationship between critique and viewing mechanism. As a results, she refuses to treat exhibition as shopping malls for browsing merchandise, thereby avoiding the trap of becoming the subject of criticism. The atmosphere of the exhibition space at Taipei Fine Art Museum is mild, restrained, and quiet, as if someone clicks the mute button on the remote. The poetic arrangement of the works gives visitors a complete sense of calm, seemingly drawing its power from the silence. However, people will sometimes suspect excessive tranquility to be an attempt to deconstruct the Taipei Biennial (and the Biennale), hinting at how unwise it is to view the event as Taiwan’s most prestigious international art stage, and even the inessentiality of biennials. Although ‘treating the biennial as a matrix, an organic whole with its various forms’ as per the curatorial statement.
Numerous works featured this year are themed around the examination of archives thus lack diversity. Meanwhile, many of the Taiwanese pieces fall short on ambition - there was an absence of complex topics which are memorable and introspective, especially with regard to reflections on Han Chinese dominance, returning justice to indigenous population, complicated China-Taiwan political statue with historical/cultural issue, and so on… Perhaps it is because Taiwanese artists are not yet capable enough to deal with these difficult issues for now. Nonetheless, the exhibits illustrating social movements in Korea, the Situationist International, several African anti-archives, works which explore and anthropology, as well as Chen Chieh-jen’s large privileged exhibition space, did live a mark, even making audience come away with a sense of guilt, exactly as they intended to.
In an age when things, novel ideas, and over-consumption are rampant, artists perhaps no longer need to create anything innovative - the examination and reshaping of past archives are already unending tasks in themselves. The unearthing of stories of historical ghosts, small-scale assaults on oppression, the incessant breaking down of walls, and the persistent questing of power have become the interpretive approaches of these artists, who have gathered at the archives and performed their role as intellectuals.
Translated by Johnny Ko. Revised by Fiona Cheng.
Issued on a.m. post issue 124, p.11