In the misty yet resilient historical fabric of Taiwan, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) this year pursues a universal impulse that transcends borders and languages: “longing.” This week on Apartment No: 26’s global stop, there’s the 14th Taipei Biennial, which opened its doors on November 1, 2025, and runs until March 29, 2026.
Curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, this edition titled “Whispers on the Horizon” conceptualizes longing not merely as nostalgia but as that “unfinished” state—the incompleteness that keeps us anchored to life, forever unattainable.
Longing is a natural consequence of living; at the deepest atomic level, we are tethered to the world through desires, enduring yearnings, and wishes. Taipei Biennial 2025 places this universal truth at its curatorial core, inviting us—through the eyes of 54 artists from 35 cities (with 72 artists in total across the edition)—to reimagine our fragmented contemporary times.
The conceptual foundation of the exhibition rests on three images borrowed from Taiwanese literature and cinema but physically absent from the museum: a puppet from Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s film The Puppetmaster, a diary from Chen Yingzhen’s story, and a stolen bicycle from Wu Ming-Yi’s novel. Though these objects are not present in the show, the puppet symbolizes “continuity,” the diary “interiority,” and the bicycle “search,” forming the invisible architecture of the entire exhibition.
Body, Breath, and Transformation: Ivana Bašić
In the corners of the first floor and in the museum’s garden, Ivana Bašić’s works emerge, drawing from memories of childhood conflict and rupture. In sculptures like “Passion of Pneumatics” and “Metanoia,” the artist materializes the act of breathing into tangible form.
Technique: Bašić combines glass, wax, bronze, and stainless steel, physicalizing the desire for “transcendence” with rhythmically crushed stones and glass vessels reminiscent of lung movements. These semi-organic, semi-cybernetic forms evoke both a sense of alienation and a familiar softness akin to maternal tenderness.
Digital Memory: Ni Hao
On the upper floors, works by Hsinchu-based artist Ni Hao offer a provocative intimacy. The “Sock Series” invites the viewer into a voyeuristic experience, as if peering over someone else’s shoulder through a screen. Figures removing socks in fetish videos purchased by the artist present a subtle, mocking approach to today’s voyeuristic tendencies in social media and information flows.
Echoes of the Past in the Present
The biennial deepens longing not only through contemporary works but also through dialogues with classical pieces from the museum’s own archive. Shiy De-Jinn’s 1975 painting “Young Man with Long Hair” revives that suspended moment between two lovers or friends—like a gaze slipping through an open window.
Ancestral Knowledge and Cultural Resistance: Edgar Calel and Monia Ben Hamouda
Edgar Calel: In “K’obomanik,” drawing from Mayan traditions in Guatemala, he offers gratitude to his ancestors with hanging stones hidden behind tulle curtains.
Monia Ben Hamouda: She combines inscribed stones tracing the path to her family cemetery in Tunisia with piles of cinnamon, red pepper, and chili. The scents of spices turn the bond between loss and cultural memory into a sensory feast.
Palestine’s Unfading Flowers: Omar Mismar
One of the most impactful works on the main floor is Lebanese artist Omar Mismar’s fabric sculpture “Still My Eyes Water.” This monumental bouquet of 54 different artificial fabric flowers, inspired by a 19th-century botanical book, depicts species native to Palestine. The work serves as a universal outpouring of longing for “home”—symbolizing both mourning and the insistence on survival in a geography under occupation and violence.
Why See It?
Taipei Biennial 2025 is not just an exhibition; it is a shared living space formed by 150 works, each a “whisper on the horizon.” Taiwan’s local story—stretching from its colonial past to its search for identity—transforms through this biennial into a global longing for “home” and “future.”
