Shanghai Biennale

Shanghai Biennale provides artists, curators, writers and art supporters from around the world with a space to meet and exchange ideas about their experiences, works and inspirations to create international dialogues.

This fifth edition has involved a wide series of shows in the whole city (multi-site exhibitions), organized by a team of three Chinese curators and an Argentinean one: Xu Jiang, Sebastián López, Zheng Shengtian, and Zhang Qing.

Bringing performance, video, photography, installation and other interactive technologies and together, the curators intended to draw the attention on the diversity of contemporary art practice in all over the world.

Design aims to break the common antagonistic relationship between art and practical as well as creation and industry, leading people to ponder over life aesthetics.

The seventh edition of Shanghai Biennale lasted from September 9 to November 16, 2008 and evolved from the urban condition of the city itself, as a starting point for its own artistic development.

This edition could be considered as a self-performative act of the art world, an attempt to promote self-liberation and reject the traditional frames of “performance” and “artistic production”.

The ninth edition of Shanghai Biennale was held in the Power Station of Art, a brand-new location with almost 97,000 square feet of exhibition space from October 2, 2012 to March 31, 2013.

This Biennale aims to inspire visitors to reflect on how the industrialized society influences culture and how this last one is going to change in the digital area, where the creative power of mankind has been unleashed.

“Why not ask again?” is the byword of the 11th Shanghai Biennale (2016 November, 11 - 2017 March 12) chosen by Raqs Media Collective in the shape of Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta.

Giving them primacy in this edition of the Shanghai Biennale means shifting these “pressure points” to our contemporary world by trying to find out what and how many sensations it constantly evokes.

Inspired by the reading of the Indian New Cinema movement pioneer Ritwik Ghatak's film Jukti, Takko aar Gappo, the curators have identified three clear conceptual “pressure points”: Arguments, Counter-arguments, and Stories.

11th Shanghai Biennale develops through a series of intersecting sections named “Terminals”, “Infra-Curatorial Platform”, “Theory Opera”, “51 Personae” and “City Projects”.

[12] “Terminals” involves staging posts, launching pads, or connecting hubs, considered by Raqs as good means to show the artists’ abilities to act as shapers of discourse as well as engines of the imagination in the contemporary world.

“Terminals” features artists Ivana Franke (Croatia), Regina José Galindo (Guatemala), Marjolijn Dijkman (Netherland) and MouSen + MSG (China).

Taking questions as attitudes or forms of life, “Theory Opera” is another kind of discursive path that can be considered as a real orchestration of major and minor modes in thought and speculation.

Guided walks, gatherings, performances, talks, special exhibitions by emerging curators, podcasts and dialogues are organized throughout the city for the whole duration of the Biennale.