Opening-week program and highlights of 13th edition

Taipei Biennial 2023 is pleased to announce special program for the opening of the 13th edition. Taking place from November 18, 2023 through March 24, 2024 and curated by Freya Chou, Reem Shadid, and Brian Kuan Wood, this year’s edition of the Taipei Biennial, titled “Small World”, will feature works from more than 50 international and local artists and musicians.

The Biennial will launch with a two-day opening program on November 18 and 19, 2023, consisting of conversations, live music performances, and listening sessions presented by artists, musicians, and writers from the Biennial. The conversation series invites groups of participants to share their work in the exhibition and exchange thoughts on their artistic practices in general including dj sniff, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Samia Halaby, Lai Chih-Sheng, Ellen Pau, Wang Wei, Alexander Provan, alongside special guest Terre Thaemlitz (a.k.a DJ Sprinkles).

Taiwanese artist Li Jiun Yang, together with the band Buddha, Tiger, Dog, will perform as part of his presentation The Psychedelic Spiritual Ceremony, an installation on view in the exhibition that traces his artistic journey over the past few decades. Samia Halaby, a 93-year-old Palestinian abstract painter living in New York, is showing a series of kinetic paintings that she wrote on an Amiga computer in the ’80s. The paintings are produced through a live performance of her doing these kinetic paintings along with music played by her collaborators. Alongside a conversation with Ellen Pau, another avant-garde video artist in her time, Halaby will be doing a live performance together with Indonesian artist Julian Abraham (Togar) during the opening days.  

Music and ways of relating to music plays an important role in Taipei Biennial 2023 as a form of cultural energy and performative tension, but also as a counterpoint to the modes of attention and embodiment ascribed to visual art. The Biennial transforms a gallery into a music room. During the opening programs, Listening sessions focused on artist-run music labels will take place in the Music Room and invite presenters to share stories, moments, motives, challenges, and, most importantly, music from the various artist networks that the labels have nurtured over the years. Participants including Comatonse recordings by DJ Sprinkles, YesNoWave Music by Julian Abrahm ‘Togar’ and Wok the Rock, Ting Shuo Hear Say by Alice Hui-Sheng Chang and Nigel Brown, and Senko Issha Records by Chi-Guang Wang.  

In addition to the music programs, nineteen new works and commissions will be featured at the Biennial.

Yang Chi-Chuan explores the intimate psychological relationships between people and places, objects, and events. She employs a delicate expression in her sculptures and sound installations and draws on personal experiences and memories to invite viewers on an intimate narrative journey that offers probing questions about our surroundings.

Hsu Tsun-Hsu documented Taiwan’s turbulent social changes and progress as a democracy. The Biennial features the series of The More We Get Together, a collection of photographs Hsu took between 1988 and 1998 during a decade of unpredictable moments and pivotal events in Taiwan. The photographs capture moments ranging from the misfit and banal to the historic and transformative. In her research-based work, Taiwanese-American artist Jen Liu fabricates speculative narratives to contest dominant accounts of the past and present. The Land at the Bottom of the Sea (2023) is the last chapter of Pink Slime Caesar Shift, a multi-year body of work in a variety of mediums and new technologies to create alternative networks for overseas female labour activism.

Another highlight is the photographic works of Taiwanese-American artist Arthur Ou. Ou’s photographs explore the close relationship between photography and light, opening up the question of what is looking back at us when we obey our desires and pursue transcending limitations. 

This year, CTBC Foundation for Arts and Culture continues to support Taipei Biennial as the lead sponsor. Special thanks to National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF) and ARTWAVE for their support of Taipei Biennial 2023. The Music Room is generously supported by Stephen Cheng. And special thanks to AUSPIC PAPER to support the opening event.

For more information on the opening programs, please visit the Taipei Biennial 2023 official website.