Asian Art Biennial 2024: How to Hold Your Breath

The Asian Art Biennial is pleased to announce the theme, the curatorial team and the list of participating artists for its 9th edition, taking place from November 16, 2024 to March 2, 2025 at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMoFA). This year’s curatorial team, convened by Taiwanese independent curator Fang Yen Hsiang, includes four international curators: Armenian-born, Paris-based curator Anne Davidian; Filipino artist and researcher Merv Espina; Singapore-based South Korean curator Haeju Kim; and Istanbul- and Paris-based curator and writer Asli Seven.

Reflecting the curators’ cross-regional collaboration, the Biennial brings together 52 artists from over 25 countries across East Asia, Central Asia, West Asia, and the Pacific. A total of 91 works, including 19 new commissions, will be exhibited.

The title of the 2024 Asian Art Biennial, How to Hold Your Breath, evokes the act of voluntarily pausing a vital function, creating a state of anticipation. A twist on the saying “don’t hold your breath,” a warning not to expect change soon, is inverted here to suggest latent hope.

Taking a deep breath and holding it anchors us in the present moment. As the world unravels into new sublevels of rock bottom, we continue to migrate and navigate through the din and dust, between place and displacement in this late capitalist fallout. This act of calming the breath and setting the mind prepares for transitioning from one reality to another, in a movement of transformation. It is an interval, to listen to the inaudible and retune with the metabolic rhythms of our bodies and the planet. 

Playing with and yet eluding the principle of a guidebook, How to Hold Your Breath can be seen as a call to withdraw from the spheres of visibility and systems perpetuating violence, to make space for opacity from which new forms of agency can emerge. Imagine it as a deep dive before embracing an uncertain and indeterminate future.

Participating artists
Noor Abed, Asian Feminist Studio for Art and Research (AFSAR), Marwa Arsanios, Andrius Arutiunian, Sharon Chin, Chu Hao Pei, Kiri Dalena, Fang Wei-Wen, Tao Leigh Goffe, Hit Man Gurung, Mashinka Firunts Hakopian, Emre Hüner, Saodat Ismailova, Maiko Jinushi, Cetus Kuo Chin-Yun, Woosung Lee, Milay Mavaliw, Nathalie Muchamad, Hwayeon Nam, Yoshinori Niwa, Pak Sheung Chuen, Nefeli Papadimouli, Natalia Papaeva, Ri, Julia Sarisetiati, Kirill Savchenkov, Aziza Shadenova, Yehwan Song, Trương Quế Chi & Nguyễn Phương Linh, Wang Yu-Song, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Jasmin Werner, Cici Wu, Nil Yalter, Gary Zhexi Zang. 

Screening Program: How Breath Moves
Bani Abidi, Noor Abuarafeh, Chingiz Aidarov, Richard Fung, Rojda Tugrul, Pallavi Paul, Sanaz Sohrabi, Your Bros. Filmmaking Group (So Yo-Hen, Tien Zong-Yuan, Liao Hsiu-Hui).

The artists in the Biennial propose alternative imaginaries and world-ordering practices, both political and aesthetic, grounded in relationality, reciprocity, and response-ability. At the core is the question: what non-oppressive communal and political forms can bring us together?

Through diverse media, the artworks challenge universal notions of time, revealing histories tied to people, places, and positions. They trace the entanglements of colonial violence with ongoing imperial politics and social systems that govern life, opening spaces for liberatory futures. Several works explore altered states—through meditation, dreams, or the pharmakon—as liminal zones offering simultaneous, multistable perceptions. The metaphysical act of breath-holding here becomes a way to imagine worlds anew, evoking creation amidst collapse.

How might future stories unfold free from the apocalyptic myths of modernity to include other beings and agencies in a practice of hope?  The answer may lie in situated and shared imaginaries, as we hold our breath together, planting the seeds of futures that resist despair and open new directions.

The Biennial opens with a two-day program of artist talks, performances, and reflections inviting audiences to explore layered realities and envision new forms of collective existence.

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