TAICHUNG CITY.- The theme of the 10th Asian Art Biennial, Mrahul Tminun—Gong-Zhi—Co-Weaving, is rooted in the cultural context of Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples, and is presented in parallel in Truku, Chinese, and English. The Truku phrase brings together Tminun, meaning “weaving,” with Mrahul, which connotes a crowd, coming together, or gathering. It evokes the everyday practice of women in the community gathering in the square to weave cloth, keep one another company, and engage in conversation, embodying the spirit of “each being themselves, while being together, together.” The core concept and methodology of “co-weaving” encompass acts of linking, interlacing, passing through, braiding, weaving, and structuring. They also suggest the negotiation of obstacles and the possibility of moving forward along indirect paths. Co-weaving describes a process in which multiple collaborators work together to weave and assemble a larger, more complex structure.

Rather than treating “Asia” solely as a geopolitical or geographical entity, the biennial regards it as a relational field in which places and people are intimately interconnected. It confronts the palimpsests, entanglements, and complexities of Asia’s multiple colonial histories, asking how, amid profoundly disparate cultures, people in Asia might come to know one another, and how co-weaving might become possible amid these differences. Bringing together thirty artist collectives, independent art spaces, and artists working collaboratively with communities, the biennial approaches “curating as a form of weaving.” On the one hand, it seeks to disentangle and comb through complex realities, open up fissures, and reveal what has remained hidden. On the other, it mobilizes weaving as a methodology for connecting, traversing, interweaving, and intersecting distinct nodes, weaving them anew and extending the practice toward translocal forms of co-weaving across Asia.

The biennial is woven through three strands: “Weaving as Method,” “Artists as Weavers,” and “Weaving People Together.” These extend into discussions of community, collaboration, collectivity, common ground, mutual aid, and sharing. The biennial foregrounds what has been overlooked or excluded within mainstream contemporary art, and considers how the marginalized perspectives of women, Indigenous peoples, and queer communities may generate new epistemologies. At the same time, seven co-learning projects, the Asian Art Biennial Forum, and numerous public programs bring together artists, curators, researchers, educators, and cultural workers, making the exhibition a collaboration among practitioners in diverse roles as well as a means of producing knowledge: “Woven Knowledge.” This edition of the Asian Art Biennial is not merely an art event, but a curatorial platform that fosters collective inquiry, sustains knowledge production, builds networks, and loosens institutional structures.

Participating artists

Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina, Busui Ajaw, Mounira Al Solh, Chang En-Man, Sheba Chhachhi & Janet Price, Culture Ferment Studio (Huang Po-Chih, Huang Chien-Yu, Huang Wei-Xi, Huang Zhe-Xi), DAVRA Collective, Cian Dayrit, Labay Eyong, GEGERBOYO, Helen Grace & Phaptawan Suwannakudt, Speedy Grandma, GUDSKUL, HomoPleasure Collective, Hou I-Ting, Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser), Inter-Asia Woodcut Mapping, Aziza Kadyri, Aluaiy Kaumakan, Kuo Yu-Ping, Lee Kai Chung & Shen Jun, Eleng Luluan, Meita Meilita, Haji Oh, Open Contemporary Art Center (OCAC), Pallavi Paul, Citra Sasmita, Womanifesto, Yamanaka Suplex, Yee I-Lann

Co-Learning Projects

Co-Learning the Southern Linguistics through Songs and Translation; Intimate Commons; The Meandering Games; Sewing Lives: Stories of Malaysia Garment Factory Women in the 1970s; Weaving the Commons: Art Archives, Materiality, and the Labour of Keeping; Weaving Invisible Threads; Zero Experience — Learning from Plants: Tree Tree Tree Person � Datong Community Co-Learning Intensive

Curator

Lu Pei-Yi, Director and Associate Professor of MA Program on Critical and Curatorial Studies of Contemporary Art, National Taipei University of Education