Abstract of In Lieu of Absence: Antinomies of Display at the Taipei Biennial

A graduate thesis for the Columbia University M.Sc. Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture, advised by Felicity Scott
2022

Printed edition forthcoming, published by Corners cutoff
2024

As a format of international art exhibitions, biennials have proliferated since the 1990s, gathering together artworks, installations, performances, screenings workshops, publications, and symposia. Often named for their host city, they are expected to bridge local and global, national and international scales of exhibition. Established in 1998, the Taipei Biennial has negotiated these antinomies, speaking to and from the political context of Taiwan. As a cultural proxy for restricted diplomatic relations, the Taipei Biennial was initiated in response to an absence of representation for the island and increasing political tensions. Since, it has become a platform from which to display Taiwan’s culture and consider its political ontology, featuring artworks which begin to subvert established notions of cultural identity and political belonging. Comprised of three essays, each which takes as its subject an edition of the Taipei Biennial, this text looks at how such practices, as acts of knowledge production, can serve as forms of cultural diplomacy. From a year-long body of research, the essays engage with archival photographs, correspondence, catalogues, and conversations with collaborators of these past editions, asking how curators and participating artists have understood the archetype of the nation-state as an imagined and palpable construct. Especially within different historical and geopolitical contexts, they ask how the biennial might complicate seemingly concrete global relationships, considering the questions raised at the Taipei Biennial and how the event has become a platform for international visibility, decolonial critique, and even resistance.