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Exhibition Theme: Does the flower hear the bee?
Like the flower that “hears” the bee’s wings, the 15th Shanghai Biennale aims to operate at the intersection of differing models of intelligence, both human and nonhuman. It is based on the belief that recent art provides us with a privileged space for such investigations, offering an embodied and interconnected sphere in which communities may form stronger bonds with “the more-than-human world.”
We live in a moment of great uncertainty and global emergency that has given rise to a widespread sense of disorientation. Our world is transforming at a pace that eludes our capacity for comprehension, leaving us feeling bewildered and uncertain. If a return to the past is impossible, art offers us potential pathways out of despair and malaise, helping us to find emergent forms-of-life and new modes of sensorial communication amid this instability.
Conceived in dialogue with the ideas of artists, curators, intellectuals, musicians, poets, scientists, and writers, Does the flower hear the bee? recognizes that much depends on our capacity to sense the world around us and attune ourselves to its diverse array of intelligences. Its hopeful vision rests on art’s ability to orient us towards an unknown future.
67 Participating Artists and Collectives from Around the World
This edition of the Biennale will feature over 250 works by 67 individual artists and collectives from around the world, including 16 from China. Over 30 works are commissioned or new.
Participating artists (listed in alphabetical order by last name):
Kim Adams, Abbas Akhavan, Allora & Calzadilla, Francis Alÿs, Ryoko Aoki, Carmen Argote, Shuvinai Ashoona, Alvaro Barrington, Lêna Bùi, Tania Candiani, Maxime Cavajani, Carolina Caycedo, Chen Ruofan, Cheng Xinhao, Sara Cwynar, Dan Er, Rohini Devasher, Miguel Fernández de Castro, Cristina Flores Pescorán, Theaster Gates, Abraham González Pacheco, Brett Graham, Hao Liang, d harding, Ho Tzu Nyen, Ngahina Hohaia, Hu Xiaoyuan, Huang Yongping, Ulala Imai, Aki Inomata, Brian Jungen, Lotus L. Kang, Amar Kanwar, Christine Sun Kim, Ragnar Kjartansson, Jaffa Lam, Lina Lapelytė, Liu Shuai, Sharon Lockhart, Liz Magor, Gordon Matta-Clark, Ari Benjamin Meyers, Audie Murray, Kosen Ohtsubo, Christian Kōun Alborz Oldham, Lisa Oppenheim, Plant South Salesroom, Qiu Shihua, R. H. Quaytman, Walid Raad, Shao Chun, Shao Fan, Heji Shin, Tan Jing, Shannon Te Ao, Luke Willis Thompson, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Gözde Mimiko Türkkan, Hajra Waheed, Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Xu Tiantian, Ami Yamasaki, Haegue Yang, Masaomi Yasunaga, Cansu Yıldıran, Gozo Yoshimasu, Zhou Tao
* Maxime Cavajani and Theaster Gates participate in the Biennale’s City Project at the Jia Yuan Hai Art Museum. The works of Rirkrit Tiravanija, Chen Ruofan, and Zhou Tao are on display at both the Power Station of Art and the Biennale’s City Project at the Jia Yuan Hai Art Museum. Liu Shuai participates in the Biennale’s City Project at the Jia Yuan Hai Art Museum and VILLA tbh, Shanghai.
Exhibition Design: Walking a Garden-Like Landscape
The 15th Shanghai Biennale centers on interactions between different life forms. The exhibition unfolds as an open landscape—a space to wander through rather than move along. Artworks seed throughout the Power Station of Art—anchored in the grand hall, threaded through circulation paths, tucked into enclosed rooms and gallery spaces. It is not a path to follow but a terrain to inhabit—where artworks, architecture, and visitors co-exist in shifting relations.
The scenography treats the building itself as landscape. Raw concrete blocks—the same industrial vocabulary as the architecture—form a man-made terrain throughout the space. Like rockwork in a garden that shapes how you see the scenery, these blocks offer different vantage points for viewing the artworks. They are utilitarian and designed for a second life: after the exhibition, they can be upcycled rather than discarded.
The design takes its cue from gardens—not as decoration, but as spatial principle. Like a Chinese scholar garden or Japanese stroll garden, the exhibition reveals itself progressively. As you move through, sightlines shift and new compositions emerge. Enclosed rooms offer moments of immersion, a different quality of attention. There is no prescribed route, only invitation. The exhibition offers moments to wander, to stop, not to rush but to rest and reflect among others. Visitors become part of the ecology—another life form moving through and shaping the space. The exhibition design team, all(zone) / Rachaporn Choochuey trusts visitors to find their own rhythm—generous enough to wander in, structured enough to discover. These pauses aren’t interruptions but essential, acknowledging that attention deepens with time, that reflection happens in stillness as much as in movement.
Exhibition Publications
The accompanying catalogue and the reader of this edition will be published concurrently with the exhibition. The 400-page catalogue prioritizes the participating artists’ voices, features essays by the three curators and includes extensive documentation of exhibited works, while occasional interludes punctuate the book as propositions for future sounds, poems, or languages.
The reader brings together artists, scholars, and writers, who explore emergent modes of receptivity, from listening as a sustained practice and forms of attending to the human and the nonhuman, to consciousness of materiality and ephemerality. Together, the texts open a range of affective, communicative, and embodied registers.
City Projects
The City Projects of the 15th Shanghai Biennale aim to have a generative momentum. Beginning at PSA, the projects progressively summon, relocate, displace, and spread into multiple landscapes—from garden fences in urban neighborhoods (e.g., VILLA tbh) to open fields on the outskirts (Jia Yuan Hai Art Museum), from carefully cultivated bonsai in botanical gardens (Shanghai Botanical Garden) to native grasses growing freely on balcony gardens (klee klee)—and over the course of the exhibition, will reach further corners of Shanghai…
These back-and-forth passages resemble successive and affective “bee paths.” As the public experiences art in different places, every pause, touch, and conversation helps catalyze the mingling of art and everyday rhythms — eventually, through perception, movement, and encounter, one quietly attunes to those “moments of abundance.”
City Projects Exhibition Information for the 15th Shanghai Biennale
Does the flower hear the bee? (Extended Version)
Artists: Maxime Cavajani, Chen Ruofan, Theaster Gates, Liu Shuai, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Zhou Tao
Time: November 8, 2025 – March 31, 2026 (Tuesday–Sunday, 09:30–17:30; closed on Monday)
Venue: Jia Yuan Hai Art Museum, No. 39 Dazhi Road, Jiading District, Shanghai
The flight map of these affective journeys along both banks of the Huangpu River converges at the Jia Yuan Hai Art Museum in Jiading, Shanghai. Designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando with a philosophy of dialogue between architecture, nature, and the human, the museum becomes a site where works by Maxime Cavajani, Chen Ruofan, Theaster Gates, Liu Shuai, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Zhou Tao form another kind of resonance with land, architecture, light, and sound.
Slide, Then Soar!
Artist: Liu Shuai
Time: November 9, 2025 – January 4, 2026 (Monday–Sunday, 10:00–18:00)
Venue: VILLA tbh, No. 15 Taojiang Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai
At VILLA tbh on 15 Taojiang Road, Xuhui, artist Liu Shuai presents Slide, Then Soar!, a commission for the 15th Shanghai Biennale. In a small, hovering form, it poetically engages the garden-world’s everyday nature—kites collaged from plants, and bamboo reeds punctured by bees and are repurposed as an instrument. Through a human–nature collaboration, the work responds to the Biennale’s query in Does the flower hear the bee?
Ami Yamasaki — Special Performance
Time: November 8, 15:00
Venue: Penjing Garden, Shanghai Botanical Garden
Participating artist Ami Yamasaki stages a site-specific performance in the Penjing Garden of the Shanghai Botanical Garden, continuing her exploration of acoustic space and reciprocal listening. Treating the human voice as a method of locating oneself in the world, and the body as a vessel that resonates with space, the artist situates herself through singing, listening, and echo, gradually dissolving the subject–site boundary and inviting audiences to co-establish new sensitivities.
Ami Yamasaki — Special Performance & Exhibition Opening (mid-December)
Venue: klee klee & friends, 2F, Building 3, Columbia Circle, No. 1626 West Yan’an Road, Shanghai
Performance Time: November 10, 10:00; Exhibition Dates: Mid-December
At klee klee’s “Wilderness Balcony,” Ami Yamasaki’s special performance serves as a prelude to the winter exhibition, telling the journey of a seed: eaten and carried afar by birds, eventually returning to the soil to quietly take root and grow into a sapling amid the grasses. This is not only a cycle of life; it also offers a micro testimony of how the “grass store,” the birds, and humans share the same sky, soil, forests, and fields—like the quiet yet abundant atmosphere at the instant when the flower meets the bee.
About the Shanghai Biennale
Launched in 1996, the Shanghai Biennale is not only the first international biennial of contemporary art in the Chinese mainland but also one of the most influential art events in Asia. In 2012, the Power Station of Art became the organizer and permanent venue of the Shanghai Biennale. From Open Space in 1996, to Inheritance and Exploration in 1998, Spirit of Shanghai in 2000, Urban Creation in 2002, Techniques of the Visible in 2004, Hyper Design in 2006, Translocalmotion in 2008, Rehearsal in 2010, Reactivation in 2012, Social Factory in 2014, Why Not Ask Again in 2016, Proregress in 2018, Bodies of Water in 2020, and Cosmos Cinema in 2023, the Biennale has always maintained Shanghai as its primary locus, upholding the mission of supporting academic and cultural innovation, while continuously tracking social evolution and trends in knowledge production in a global context with an open view. Taking place in Shanghai every two years, the Biennale has also become a large-scale platform for the international presence and exchange of contemporary art.
About the Shanghai Biennale City Projects
As a unique urban event and cultural landmark, the Shanghai Biennale has long been committed to enabling active dialogues between contemporary art and the booming city of Shanghai. First launched in 2012, the Biennale’s City Projects interact with public spaces such as exhibition pavilions, cinemas, and cultural centers, mobilizing local actors to explore the regional context through shows, screenings, field surveys, and workshops. This program aims to extend the Biennale beyond the museum and establish a closer relationship with the city’s residents and its cultural ecology.
The 15th Shanghai Biennale: Does the flower hear the bee?
Chief Curator: Kitty Scott
Co-curators: Daisy Desrosiers, Xue Tan
Curators: Long Yitang, Zhang Yingying
Exhibition Design: all(zone) / Rachaporn Choochuey
Graphic Designer: Sara De Bondt
Editor: Sarah Demeuse
Venue: Power Station of Art
City Project Partner: JIA YUAN HAI, tbh, Shanghai Botanical Garden, klee klee
Special Partner: Aesop
Official Travel Partner: DENZA
Official Hotel Partner: The Langham, Shanghai, Xintiandi and Brilliant by Langham
Acknowledgements: FLOS
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About the Power Station of Art (PSA)
Established on Oct 1, 2012, the Power Station of Art (PSA) is the first state-run contemporary art museum in the Chinese mainland. It is also home to the Shanghai Biennale. Formerly the Nanshi Power Plant, the now renovated PSA was once the Pavilion of Future during the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. Having witnessed Shanghai’s transformation from the industrial age to the digital era, the museum’s raw architecture has provided rich inspiration for artists. As a central hub for Shanghai’s booming urban culture, PSA is committed to innovation and progress as keys to its long-term vitality. The museum aims to provide an interface for the public to come into contact with and appreciate contemporary art, to break down the barrier between life and art, and to promote cooperation and knowledge production across diverse fields of arts and culture.
