所有令人屏息的─ 2024亞洲藝術雙年展 How to Hold Your Breath - 2024 Asian Art Biennial

2024. 11. 16 — 2025. 03.02 
Main Lobby、Gallery Street、Gallery 102-107、Gallery 202-205

Opening: 2024. 11. 16 at 6.30 p.m.

Curatorial Team: Fang Yen Hsiang, Anne Davidian, Merv Espina, Haeju Kim, Asli Seven
 

How to Hold Your Breath 

On March 27, 2021, Croatian freediver Budimir Šobat breaks the record for the longest voluntary breath hold, at 24 minutes and 37.36 seconds.


In June 1986, amidst a year marked by disasters and dissent—from the bloodless People Power Revolution that ousted the three-decade-long Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines, to the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe—the song Take My Breath Away tops the charts.


In the early centuries CE, the compiled Yoga Sutras of Patanjali describe the practice of kumbhaka as the gradual cessation of breathing, the discontinuance of inhalation and exhalation. The retention of breath has long been known as one of the oldest and simplest techniques for accessing altered states of mind.


The title of the 2024 Asian Art Biennial, How to Hold Your Breath, evokes the act of voluntarily pausing a vital function, creating a state of anticipation. A twist on the saying "don’t hold your breath," a warning not to expect change soon, is inverted here to suggest latent hope.


Taking a deep breath and holding it anchors us in the present moment. As the world unravels into new sublevels of rock bottom, we continue to migrate and navigate through the din and dust, between place and displacement in this late capitalist fallout. This act of calming the breath and setting the mind prepares for transitioning from one reality to another, in a movement of transformation. It is an interval, to listen to the inaudible and retune with the metabolic rhythms of our bodies and the planet. 


Playing with and yet eluding the principle of a guidebook, How to Hold Your Breath can be seen as a call to withdraw from the spheres of visibility and systems perpetuating violence, to make space for opacity from which new forms of agency can emerge. Imagine it as a deep dive before embracing an uncertain and indeterminate future.


The artists in the 2024 Asian Art Biennial propose alternative imaginaries and practices of world-ordering, both political and aesthetic, inspired by knowledge and ways of living grounded in relationality, reciprocity, and response-ability. At the core of this inquiry is the question: what non-oppressive communal and political forms can bring us together?


Through a variety of media, the artworks presented in the Biennial challenge progressive and universal notions of time, revealing instead how histories are tied to people, places, and positions. By tracing the entanglements of colonial violence within ongoing imperial politics and new social systems that govern life, they open spaces for alternative liberatory futures.


Now and always, we inhabit a pluriverse where multiple worlds coexist and continually shift. Several works in the Biennial engage with altered states—whether through meditation, sleep, dreams, or the pharmakon—seen as liminal zones allowing for alternate, simultaneous, multistable perceptions of the multitude of worlds. The metaphysical act of breath-holding emerges as a means to compose and imagine worlds anew, evoking potential for creation amidst collapse.


ultural and geographical displacement under global capitalism continues to alter identities, meanings, and constitutions of humans and non-humans alike. Plants, animals, minerals, and human beings are displaced, exiled, extracted, transformed, and objectified within taxonomies of capitalist accumulation, conforming to logics of product and service. Yet, other ways of connection and belonging emerge between and beyond these movements of goods and people, just as new species and cultures evolve outside established maps and memory.


How might future stories unfold free from the apocalyptic myths of modernity to include other beings and agencies in a practice of hope? The answer may lie not in grandiose visions but in concrete, situated imaginaries that we can share with others, close or far— whether through engaging with the small details of everyday life or embarking on new hybrid communities. It is here, in these relationships that we create, where we hold our breath together, that we might find the seeds for imagining a future that resists despair and opens toward new directions.

Participating artist list

努兒．阿蓓德 Noor Abed

亞洲女性主義藝術研究室 Asian Feminist Studio for Art and Research（AFSAR）

瑪爾瓦．阿爾薩尼奧斯 Marwa Arsanios

安德里烏斯．阿魯丘尼恩 Andrius Arutiunian

陳愛瓊 Sharon Chin

朱浩培 Chu Hao Pei

奇里．黛蓮娜 Kiri Dalena

方偉文 Fang Wei-Wen

陶．雷伊．高佛Tao Leigh Goffe

伊特曼．古隆 Hit Man Gurung

瑪欣卡．費倫茨．哈科皮安 Mashinka Firunts Hakopian

埃姆雷．胡納爾 Emre Hüner

薩歐妲．伊斯瑪伊洛娃 Saodat Ismailova

地主麻衣子 Maiko Jinushi

郭敬耘 Cetus Kuo Chin-Yun

李宇城 Woosung Lee

米類‧瑪法琉 Milay Mavaliw

娜塔莉．穆恰馬德 Nathalie Muchamad

南和延 Hwayeon Nam

丹羽良德 Yoshinori Niwa

白雙全 Pak Sheung Chuen

涅翡麗．帕帕迪穆里 Nefeli Papadimouli

娜塔莉亞．帕帕耶娃 Natalia Papaeva

Ri

茱利亞．薩里賽提亞蒂 Julia Sarisetiati

基里爾．薩夫琴科夫 Kirill Savchenkov

阿齊扎．沙德諾娃 Aziza Shadenova

宋禮煥 Yehwan Song

張桂芝&阮芳伶 Trương Quế Chi & Nguyễn Phương Linh

王煜松 Wang Yu-Song

阿比查邦．韋拉斯塔古 Apichatpong Weerasethakul

雅思敏．維爾納 Jasmin Werner

武雨濛 Cici Wu

妮爾．雅爾特 Nil Yalter

張哲熙 Gary Zhexi Zang

Art Works

Cetus Kuo Chin-Yun, Because Watching Pacifies, 2024, two-channel video installation with 7.1 surround sound and objects, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist.

Sharon Chin, Portal, 2024, site-specific installation with oil lamps and wheatpasted poster images, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist.

Saodat Ismailova, Arslanbob, 2024, three-channel video, 20 min 30 sec. Image courtesy of the artist.

Nil Yalter, Exile is a Hard Job, 1975-ongoing, site-specific installation: fly-posters and red acrylic paint, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist and THE PILL®.

Gary Zhexi Zhang, The Tourist, 2023, single-channel 4K video, 24 min 58 sec. Image courtesy of the artist.

Natalia Papaeva, What will this circle bring this time?, performance, Photography by Farouk Ebaiss (@The Momentory)and Suns and Stars (@sunsandstars_nl).

Nefeli Papadimouli, Dream Coat, performance. Image courtesy of the artist.

Opening Week Public Program Schedule

​​​​​​11/16

11/17