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Curator Kitty Scott on Her Vision for the 15th Shanghai Biennale

The Art Power Station during the last Shanghai Biennale. The Power Station of Art

Established in 1966, the Shanghai Biennale was the first event of its kind in Mainland China. During the busy Shanghai Art Week, the Biennale unveiled plans for its 15th edition, which will open at the Art Power Station in November 2025 and run until March of the following year. Entitled “Can the Flower Hear the Bee?”, the show will be helmed by Canadian curator Kitty Scott, whose impressive track record includes roles at Documenta 12, the 2018 Liverpool Biennale and the Canadian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale. Scott has served as senior curator at the National Gallery of Canada, curator of modern art and the Contemporary Art Gallery of Ontario and senior curator at the Serpentine Galleries in London. She will be the first woman to lead the Shanghai Biennale since its inception—a milestone long overdue—but surprisingly, despite the breadth of her work, Scott's involvement with the Shanghai or Chinese art scene has been limited to a few studies in recent years. .

On an unseasonably warm autumn day, he stood on the terrace of Shanghai's Sheraton Plaza and explained that the open theme would encompass multiple meanings while answering some of civilization's most pressing questions. At a reception following his presentation, Scott told the Observer that the topic came from his thinking about nature and the hidden communication systems that surround us. Research, which he described during his talk, shows that flowers 'feel' bees and, as a result, produce sweet nectar to welcome them. As Scott said, “we've known for a long time that when bees congregate, they communicate and share information. We are just noticing that this network of communication goes further… It turns out that flowers, too, gather information, and now we are happy that they can hear the vibration of the bees' wings.”

A portrait of a woman in black and white.A portrait of a woman in black and white.
Photo by Kitty Scott, curator of the 15th Shanghai Biennale. The Power Station of Art

The 15th Shanghai Biennale will explore new forms of sensory communication between works of art, encouraging dialogue and harmony with other intelligences, from animals to plants. “The works of art give us a special space to do that in an integrated and connected way, to create strong bonds between communities and harmony with the world beyond the human,” said Scott, seeing viewers as flowers, with a wide variety of flowers. life and wisdom around them.

Scott also highlighted Shanghai's unique position as an “urban place defined by the meeting of diverse and sometimes conflicting cultures,” making it an ideal place to explore the many perspectives needed to address the critical challenges facing our society today. The Biennale's artist selection will combine local and global perspectives while focusing specifically on Indigenous artists as bearers of alternative forms of knowledge. He is already working with a primarily local management team, and while much remains to be done, Scott clarified during our interview that the selection process will ensure regional voices are aligned with international ones.

The dialectic tension between art and nature and how handmade objects act as vessels of cultural memory and identity, transcending nationality or politics and connecting people to a shared need for expression, is one of the core themes of the Biennale. Scott extended this idea to modern technology, including AI, which he described as the latest evolution in the progression of human creativity. “All human abilities, no matter how abstract, begin in physical activity and, at a deeper level, in information conveyed by touch and hand movements,” he said. However, the Biennale also aims to challenge the outdated view of human agency in communication, encouraging us to be aware of the “wide network of communication agents that collectively shape the world.”

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In this spirit, the Biennale aims to reconnect us with the old idea of technea far cry from today's digital-visual divide, it's a practice that reinforces the bond between mind and craft—a reminder of the deeply intertwined nature of the human experience. According to Scott, “the visual arts provide insight into the techniques of experience that can shape our interactions with others.”

By focusing on multiculturalism, cross-cultural relationships, and traditional knowledge, Scott envisions a Biennale that, in his words, can “contribute to the great work of the present, to rebuild a culture of transcendence, a culture that is accessible everywhere and to everyone.” In the tradition of intellectuals such as Eduard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau, the 15th Shanghai Biennale will explore the idea of ​​humanity in harmony with other forms of intelligence, training viewers to recognize the delicate symphonies on which our existence depends.

The 15th Shanghai Biennale will open on November 8, 2025. More details will be revealed in the following months.

Curator Kitty Scott on Her Vision for the 15th Shanghai Biennale




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