The Taipei Biennial 2025, titled Whispers on the Horizon, will transform the Taipei Fine Arts Museum from November 1st, 2025, to March 29th, 2026, into a space where art, memory, and longing intersect. Curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, this 14th edition of the Biennial invites visitors to explore the many faces of yearning through the works of 54 artists from 35 cities around the world.
The concept of ‘Whispers on the Horizon’
At the heart of the Taipei Biennial 2025 lies the notion of yearning—an emotion that transcends eras and borders. The curators reinterpret yearning as more than nostalgia or desire; it becomes a living force that connects personal histories with collective memory. Taiwan’s complex past, shaped by colonial transitions and shifting identities, forms the poetic backdrop to this edition.
Bardaouil and Fellrath describe yearning as a global condition that, today, takes on collective meaning: a search for belonging amid fragmentation and for clarity amid confusion. Rather than seeking to resolve these emotions, the Biennial aims to make them visible, tangible and shared.
Highlights from the biennial
Several standout works embody this vision. In Love after Death, Korakrit Arunanondchai merges myth and memory in a haunting projection of spirits and symbols, reflecting on grief’s transformation into renewal. Omar Mismar’s Still My Eyes Water presents an enormous bouquet of artificial flowers—perfect yet scentless—meditating on Palestine’s beauty and its fading recollections. Zih-Yan Ciou’s Fake Airfield reconstructs a colonial-era decoy airfield to question historical narratives and Taiwanese identity.
Among the site-specific installations, Álvaro Urbano’s TABLEAU VIVANT (A Stolen Sun) transforms the museum into a silent stage where light animates objects, merging past and present. Fatma Abdulhadi’s fragrant garden, What Remains… Stay as Long as You Can, preserves rituals of care through scent and silence. Meanwhile, Gaëlle Choisne’s Fortune Cookies—thousands of handmade clay pieces—conceals seeds and secrets, embodying hidden labor and forgotten stories.
Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath: a dialogue across time
The curators, Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, directors of Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof, bring their signature blend of historical sensitivity and cross-cultural dialogue to the Taipei Biennial 2025. Their approach intertwines contemporary artworks with early 20th-century Taiwanese paintings and artifacts from the National Palace Museum, creating a conversation between epochs. This layering reveals how yearning reverberates across time—preserved in brushstrokes, ceramics, and contemporary gestures alike.
Don’t miss our new interview with curator and thinker Sam Bardaouil, in which he considers the museum to be a living organism that breathes with freedom, memory and collective responsibility.
A universal longing
Though rooted in Taiwan’s context, Whispers on the Horizon speaks to universal emotions—migration, identity, and belonging. It lingers rather than concludes, inviting audiences to listen to the quiet hum between memory and imagination.
The Taipei Biennial 2025 opens November 1st, 2025, at Taipei Fine Arts Museum and runs until March 29th, 2026. Don’t miss this powerful exploration of longing and connection that continues to shape our shared human story.
