The 2019 Asian Art Biennial will be on view at the National Taiwan
Museum of Fine Arts this October. Taiwanese artist Hsu Chia-Wei and Singaporean
artist Ho Tzu-Nyen are invited to curate this prestigious exhibition. The
museum’s expectations regarding the two “artist-curators” are threefold: (1)
bringing the process of artistic production into the curatorial horizons; (2)
advancing research at different levels and introducing transdisciplinary
curatorial practice through a more flexible and adaptive exhibition installation;
and (3) carefully exploring the cultural issues and formal hybridization
exclusive to Asian arts from multiple dimensions and perspectives.
Both curators focus their respective oeuvres on excavating,
encrypting and reconstructing critical events in Asian history, in which a
diversity of issues are touched upon. Hsu’s artistic practice has revolved
around Asian history in the Cold War era. Featuring the imperceptible agency of
images, Hsu’s works tend to recount events beyond the scope of his camera lens,
thereby making themselves connected with the figures, things and places
excluded from official records. Hsu’s recent curatorial projects included the
2018 Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition, ThaiTai: A Measure of
Understanding, and so forth. Based on rigorous historical research and relying
heavily on extensive references from literature, philosophy and art history,
Ho’s works are intended to inspire alternative narratives and imaginations
about Southeast Asia’s culture, history and geopolitics via a riotous profusion
of media and vocabulary ranging from film,
video, animation and theater to installation, sound and text.
Against
the background of the Anthropocene and the information society, this biennial
will investigate the possibility of the intersection between technological
issues and politico-historical propositions, thereby addressing the question as
to how contemporary artists re-interpret humanistic and technological issues
simultaneously in terms of politics, history and economy. 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.
We plan to invite a total of 30 artists/artist groups from Asia to accomplish
this great achievement with concerted efforts.