Shanghai Biennale

The Shanghai Biennale is one of the highest-profile contemporary art events in Shanghai and the most established art biennale in China. It was initially held in the Shanghai Art Museum. From 2012 on, it has been hosted in Power Station of Art, the first state-run museum dedicated to contemporary art in mainland China. Aside from its main museum show, it also includes talks, lectures and installations in various venues throughout the city.

First edition

The Shanghai Biennale was founded in 1996 by Fang Zengxian, then director of the Shanghai Art Museum, and was hosted at the museum for eight editions before switching to the Power Station of Art in 2012. The first edition of Shanghai (Fine Art) Biennale was approved by the Ministry of Culture and Shanghai Municipal Administration and held from March 18 to April 7, 1996. Its theme was named “Open Space” in order to highlight the new opening of the country towards the development of many cultural fields. This edition was attended by 29 artists and displayed 114 pieces of artworks including paintings and installations. Among the 29 artists, 26 are oil painters and 3 are Chinese diaspora artists whose installation works were shown.

1998 edition

The second edition of Shanghai Biennale was organized in collaboration with the Annie Wong Art Foundation and on displayed from October 10 to November 20, 1998. The exhibition almost doubled in size and showcased a total of 200 works from 50 artists, of which 15 are Chinese diaspora artists. The theme is “Integration and Expansion”, which explored ink as an important subject matter throughout the history of Chinese modern art. Using a traditional art medium in China, the works displayed a wide range of techniques, expressions and experiments. The main object of this edition was to contextualize the development of ink art even in the contemporary production of artworks and to explore new possibilities of its employment.

2000 edition

The year 2000 is a turning point as many ground-breaking elements were implemented. This was the first edition that invited foreign artists and curators, and displayed new media artworks that are more at the forefront of contemporary art with the purpose to improve Shanghai's role in arts as the “gateway to the west”. This edition was held from November 6, 2000 to January 6, 2001. It was also the first that gained global attention. The international aspect of this edition can be deduced from the title: even if it has been translated into “Spirit of Shanghai”, the Chinese characters create a wordplay upon the name of the city (上"Shang" and 海"Hai" so “over the sea”) that stands for “on the high seas”. It suggested Asia as an important agent in global contemporary art movements and discourses. The curatorial team was headed by Hou Hanru.

2002 edition

Named “Urban Creation”, the fourth edition of Shanghai Biennale consisted of “Urban Creation” exhibition and the “Shanghai hundred historic buildings” exhibition. From November 22, 2002 to January 20, 2003 a group of 68 artists and architects took part in it with their 300 works, some of them created expressly for Shanghai Biennale.

2004 edition

From September 28 to November 28, 2004 Shanghai dealt with the exploration of the visible world, so the world of technology and its way of impacting on human daily life. Named “Techniques of the Visible”, it focused on the close relationship between art and technology, especially how art reveals its interdependent nature that produces technology and then related itself to humanity. 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.

2006 edition

Living in the era of ubiquitous design and art, the sixth edition of Shanghai Biennale focused on "hyper design" as its main theme. From September 6 to November 5, 2006 it examined how design is constantly linked to everyday life.

2008 edition

The seventh edition of Shanghai Biennale lasted from September 9 to November 16, 2008.

2010 edition

Lasting from October 24, 2010 to January 23, 2011, the eighth edition of Shanghai Biennale was defined as a "rehearsal" so a reflective space of performance and included an unprecedented amount of performance art. The specific responsibility of the curators, who included Fan Di’an, director of the National Art Museum of China, and Gao Shiming, a professor at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou., was to differentiate, organize and then mobilize the whole art system.

2012 edition

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. To fill the voluminous halls of this new venue, large-scale works were chosen by the chief curator Qiu Zhije, the Hong Kong curator Johnson Chang, the New York-based media theorist Boris Groys, and Jens Hoffmann, deputy director of the Jewish Museum in New York. A total number of 90 solo artists and collectives from 27 countries were selected according to their interpretation of “Reactivation”, the theme of the 2012 Shanghai Biennale. “Reactivation” referred to the reform and restarting of the Nanshi Power Plant and the Expo 2010 “Pavilion of Future” in the shape of Power Station of Art.

2014 edition

The tenth edition of Shanghai Biennale was characterized by questions about the relationship between the social and the fictive spheres in the building of society, and the different ways in which the “social” is produced in the 21st century. From November 23, 2014 to March 31, 2015.

2016 edition

“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.

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

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

References

External links

Shanghai Biennale Official Site

{{List of Biennales

Culture in Shanghai
Art exhibitions in China
Events in Shanghai
Recurring events established in 1996
1996 establishments in Shanghai
Art biennials
Tourist attractions in Shanghai