Titled 水体 Bodies of Water, the 13th Shanghai Biennale will advocate for processes of planetary re-alliance relying on transspecies collectivity. Exploring forms of fluid solidarity, the Biennale will convene artists to think beyond human-centered and nation-based narratives, connecting the discussions of bodies with those of the environment.
The Biennale is engaging with the history and geography of Shanghai, a long-standing arena for liquid territorial bodies, and the site for this Biennale. The city is intimately connected to the 5,000-meter descent to the East China Sea of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau’s meltwaters located at the intersection of the Huangpu and the Yangtze Rivers, and in the vicinity of the human-made Jing-Hang Grand Canal. Particles dragged from up to 6,300 kilometers of sediment are metabolized by edible plants at the Yangtze Delta, China’s most fertile agricultural site. Mineral and organic matter, travelling suspended as part of bodies of water, is then rebodied. Water flowing reconstructs geographies and vitalizes organisms. Not without struggle.
The Shanghai Biennale, the oldest art biennale in China, will ultimately interrogate its own situation at PSA, a former coal-electric plant that fueled the industrialization of the Huangpu River, a cauldron of accelerated production and bodily mobilization.
This edition will nurture art as an ecosystem of practices closely connected to different forms of human and non-human knowledge, sense, and intelligence. In close collaboration with Shanghai’s universities and networks of independent art spaces and activism, the Biennale will build on art’s interdependency with science, social constructs, technology, and modes of spirituality. Rather than presenting art as autonomous, it will provide a platform to acknowledge the diversity in which research and knowledge-making happens and is disseminated.
THE PHASES: IN CRESCENDO BIENNALE
For the first time, the Shanghai Biennale will operate as an eight-month “in crescendo” project, unfolding in three phases:
PHASE 01: A WET-RUN REHEARSAL. November 10–14, 2020. A summit bringing together contributors to present their work in the form of a performative assembly taking place in the PSA’s Grand Hall and spreading out to networks of art spaces along the Yangtze River, as well as online.
PHASE 02: AN ECOSYSTEM OF ALLIANCES. November 15, 2020 – April 9, 2021. Keeping a permanent post at the PSA, the “in crescendo” project associates itself with infrastructures where online/offline social and communal life are taking place. These include streaming TV channels, social media, university programs, and serial interventions on urban dynamics.
PHASE 03: AN EXHIBITION. April 10 – June 27, 2021. Opening with a festival, the Biennale will unfold into an exhibition that will run through PSA and expand into a series of locations along the Huangpu River and across the city of Shanghai.
Shanghai Biennale 水体 Bodies of Water: The 13th Shanghai Biennale
Tuesday, November 10, 2020 – Sunday, June 27, 2021
Chief Curator: Andrés Jaque
Curators: YOU Mi, Marina Otero Verzier, Lucia Pietroiusti
Head of Research and Publications: Filipa Ramos
Participating artists:
Alberto Baraya; Ana Mendieta; Antoni Muntadas*; Astrida Neimanis*; Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor; Clare Britton*; Ayesha Tan Jones*; Cao Minghao and Chen Jianjun*; Carlos Casas*; Carlos Irijalba*; Cecilia Vicuña; Cheng Xinyi; Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe); Dai Chenlian*; Debajo del Sombrero (participating artists: Andrés Fernández, José Manuel Egea, Miguel García, María Lapastora and Belén Sánchez); Diakron and Emil Rønn Andersen*; Diane Severin Nguyen*; Feliciano Centurión; Guo Fengyi; Heather Phillipson*; Ibiye Camp*; Itziar Okariz*; Jenna Sutela; Joan Jonas*; Karrabing Film Collective; Kyriaki Goni*; Liam Young; Michael Wang*; Nerea Calvillo (C+arquitectas)*; P Staff in collaboration with Basse Stittgen*; Pepe Espaliú; Pu Yingwei*; ReUnion X DMAS*; Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen; Sun Xiaoxing, Qiu Zhen, Zhao Kunfang and Huang Siyao*; Tabita Rézaire; Torkwase Dyson*; Vera Frenkel; WORKac (Amale Andraos and Daniel Edward Wood); Zadie Xa and Benito Mayor Vallejo*; Zheng Mahler (Royce Ng and Daisy Bisenieks)
*Names with asterisks correspond to new commissions. Further artists to be announced at the press preview on April 15, 2021.
Kyriaki Goni is an SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2018.