Organised by the Delhi-based artist and curator group Raqs Media Collective—Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, and Shuddhabrata Sengupta—the biennale takes the theme Why Not Ask Again? The topic was inspired by books such as the popular Chinese science fiction trilogy The Three Body Problem, by Liu Cixin, which explores the idea in physics that two bodies in space will interact predictably, but a third introduces uncertainty. “Science fiction, philosophy and the three body problem produce interesting questions, about viewing the self as a fragment of the infinity of the universe,” says Bagchi. The show will also be informed by Ritwik Ghatak’s 1974 Indian New Cinema classic Jukti, Takko aar Gappo (Arguments, Counter-Arguments and Stories), about “confront[ing] despair and living with life itself as a possibility”.
Bagchi also introduced a list of the first 15 artists selected and special artists’ projects by Ivana Franke (Germany), Regina José Galindo (Guatemala), MouSen+MSG (China) and Marjolijn Djkman (Belgium). Some 80 to 85 artists in total will be selected, Bagchi said. The long-running biennale is joined this autumn by two new events in China: one at the Yinchuan Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by an Indian artist, Bose Krishnamachari, and Shanghai Project, a hosted by the Himalayas Museum and directed by Yongwoo Lee and Hans Ulrich Obrist. “Our event is really rooted in Shanghai, not something brought in from outside,” said the Power Station’s director Gong Yan. “Every time we try to make something different, and value-added, with a lot of happy surprises.”
Feng Yuan, the chair of the spaces academic committee, said that Raqs was selected as curators this year because “we wanted a bigger cultural perspective. Every place has different traditions and classics, a different mainstream and counterculture. India and China have a long and strong historical interaction, but less contemporary cultural interaction.”
