2024 Asian Art Biennial: Artist lineup, key events, and more

One of the highlights includes a screening programme of eight films, collectively titled How Breath Moves. It reimagines breath as a collective cinematic device, moving across the bodies to techniques of light and projection, to explore the circulation of images, sounds, memory, and collective storytelling.

As the theme invites visitors to withdraw from systems of violence and visibility while rediscovering histories tied to people and places, the films in this programme engage with strategies of survival and creativity against the enduring legacies of colonialism.

“They celebrate the migration and translation of cultural forms through food and music; and reveal the uplifting powers of anger and love amid grief and loss,” NTMoFA shares.

The 2024 Asian Art Biennial also opens with a two-day public programme featuring artist talks, performances, and moments of reflection. Addressing themes of displacement, speculative features, and reimagined rituals, artists invite audiences to explore layered realities and envision new forms of collective existence.

The full list of participating artists includes 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, and Gary Zhexi Zang.

In the screening programme, visitors will be seeing the works of Bani Abidi, Noor Abuarafeh, Chingiz Aidarov, Richard Fung, Rojda Tugrul, Pallavi Paul, Sanaz Sohrabi, and the Your Bros Filmmaking Group, which comprises So Yo-Hen, Tien Zong-Yuan, and Liao Hsiu-Hui.

Not to miss in the Asian Art Biennial is the newly commissioned work by Arutiunian titled Under the Cold Sun, which plays with the idea of “possessed” instruments. Catch also two other sound works by Arutiunian—Delights n.2, a specially created audioguide with a psychedelic effect designed to alter the visitor’s perceptual state and Armen, a speculative investigation of diasporic imaginaries, published on audio cassette and performed during car rides through Taichung.

Meanwhile, Kuo’s new project, Because Watching Pacifies, explores the historical connections between Taiwan’s mountainous areas and the Zomia Highlands, discussing how governance techniques of territory create similar landscapes in diverse corners of the world.

Another newly commissioned work, Portal by Chin, incorporates installation and performance to reflect on the relationship between humans and land. Engaging with the community and addressing the ecological damage caused by oil refineries and coal power plants in Port Dickson, Malaysia, the work invokes the transformations required for us to collectively respond to these challenges.

Ismailova presents a new edit of her ongoing film project, A Seed Under a Tongue. Titled Arslanbob, the work delves into the historical and hallucinative memory of a relict forest, depicted as both a mystical site and a reservoir of ancestral knowledge—a gateway to archetypes and non-human intelligences.

This year’s participation of Yater in the Asian Art Biennial was conceived in response to the living conditions of migrant workers in Taichung and their creativity. A celebration of modernism in all its forms, the 1992 video installation titled / AM (Circular Rituals) was augmented with an additional soundtrack by the Filipino migrant rappers Ar-Em Sicat, Angelito, and TheThird to interpret Yalter’s wall-text poem as a rap song. In addition, Yalter’s fly-poster installation Exile is a Hard Job (1977-ongoing) takes place inside the ASEAN building, thus expanding the Asian Art Biennial’s space to emphasise Taichung’s integral role in trade and labour routes.

Lastly, Zhang’s new series, Alignments (I-III), consists of three intricately printed pieces that materialise the artist’s research into a shifting historical sensorium. Weaving complex stories across time and space in diagrammatic forms, the pieces engage with connections between sovereignty and immortality, selected geographical and historical coordinates as “poles of inaccessibility” and the uneasy marriage between Afrofuturism and Sinofuturism.

Being one of Asia’s most representative art biennials, the Asian Art Biennial is an important bi-annual exhibition hosted by NTMoFA. Since its establishment in 2007, it has been committed to presenting the development of contemporary art with an emphasis on Asia. Asian Art Biennials in recent years have convened curators with cross-disciplinary backgrounds to help shape curatorial mechanisms through collective dialogue. Invitations for the participation of Asian artists from diverse cultures and wide-ranging perspectives have created a platform for interaction.

National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, 2, Sec. 1, Wuquan West Road, Taichung, Taiwan

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