In Shanghai, all the senses are awakened

Shanghai (China). Entitled “Does the Flower Hear the Bee?” » (Does the flower hear the bee?), the 15th edition of the Shanghai Biennale, which opened on November 8, explores forms of human and non-human intelligence through 250 works by 67 artists and collectives, a quarter of which are Chinese. She addresses this question in a poetic and sensory way, while science has shown that flowers “hear” the vibration of bees, influencing the composition of their nectar, as Kitty Scott, curator at the origin of the theme, recalls in the biennial catalog. Its all-female curatorial team brings together Xue Tan (chief curator of the Haus der Kunst, Munich) and Daisy Desrosiers (director of The Gund, Ohio), in collaboration with Gong Yan, director of the Power Station of Art (PSA), which has hosted the Shanghai Biennale since 2012.

In dialogue with nature, numerous works engage all of our senses. Suspended in the heart of the PSA atrium, Phantom Forest (“ghost forest”, 2025, [voir ill.]), by the Puerto Rican duo Allora & Calzadilla, deploys three nebulae of levitating yellow flowers. Like spring in autumn, the installation also invites visitors to handle and curl up in the same artificial flowers made of recycled PVC, placed on the ground. On the first floor, Prologue II. Resonant Blossoms (2025), by Mexican artist Tania Candiani, extends this biophilic aesthetic with sculptures in wicker and woven rattan. Suspended vertically, these giant pistils diffuse natural sounds that encourage the public to place themselves under their flared opening, as if to become the pollinators of these sound installations.

Taste is challenged with the installation of the Thai Rirkrit Tiravanija (Untitled [cure], 1992), a tea room draped in orange fabric where visitors can take a break and chat around a round table while tasting different types of tea, in the spirit of the relational aesthetic that characterizes his work. The sense of smell is stimulated with Linga Munich (2025, [voir ill.]), by Japanese artist Kosen Ohtsubo, who combines the art of ikebana with the shape of linga Shivaite. The monumental installation diffuses natural fragrances coming from its materials, like a potpourri. A selection of his photographs from the 1970s and 1980s completes the presentation of this “ikebana-clast” unparalleled.

Outside the walls

A former power station turned museum, the PSA is thus transformed into an artistic hive open to the world, a notable gesture in a context of strong regional tensions, in particular between China and Japan. The spread continues outside the walls with an outdoor work by Abbas Akhavan, visible on the roof of a building next to the museum, and a satellite exhibition at the Jia Yuan Hai Art Museum in Shanghai which includes two works by Theaster Gates dedicated to Sino-Japanese cultural and spiritual exchanges.

Alchemy also works among Chinese artists, driven by the affinity of the biennial theme with Chinese cultural canons, both literary and artistic. The reference is explicit in Preface to the poem about the peach blossom spring (2008), illustrated manuscript by Huang Yong Ping in which he reinterprets the utopian fable of the poet Tao Yuanming (365-427) as a political and cultural metaphor for the contemporary world, particularly on the relationship between East and West.

Young artists are particularly well represented through varied offerings, ranging from painting (Hao Liang) to ceramics (Jaffa Lam), including video (Zhou Tao) and a series of original installations. Among the latter: Dust (2025) by Chen Ruofan, which is part of the double legacy of Marcel Duchamp (Dust Breeding1920) and Huang Yong Ping (Dust1987), as well as Twinland (2025) by Shao Chun, a multimedia organic matrix embodying the “Ghost of the Internet” and continuing the pioneering work of Nam June Paik, notably through the use of ASMR (Autonomous sensory meridian response). The biennial thus offers an invigorating exhibition for the young Chinese artistic scene, still convalescing after the pandemic asphyxiation. This revival, fragile but notable, makes us forget the particularly strict censorship rules in force in the country. If this event benefits the liberal image of Shanghai, it above all testifies to the meticulous work of the curatorial team, which was able to avoid the pitfalls of polarized propaganda between “artwashing” And greenwashingwithout renouncing the artistic requirement. Here again, Chinese tradition plays an enlightening role, in particular “painting of flowers and birds” (hua niao hua), major genre in art history, which has long served as a coded language to subtly criticize imperial power.