2024 Asian Art Biennial ‘How to Hold Your Breath’

Complex connections and migratory histories
By Ian Tee

Pak Sheung Chuen, ‘Breathing in a House’ (video still), 2006, single-channel video, 6min. Image courtesy of the artist.

The 9th Asian Art Biennial has the evocative theme ‘How to Hold Your Breath’. It reverses the phrase “don’t hold your breath” and instead expresses latent hope for the possibility of change despite challenging circumstances. The biennial is curated by a team convened by Taiwanese independent curator Fang Yen Hsiang, and includes four international curators: Anne Davidian, Merv Espina, Haeju Kim and Asli Seven. Organised by National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMoFA) in Taichung, it brings together 35 artist groups from over 20 countries across Asia and the Pacific region.

Fittingly, the show opens with ‘Breathing in a House’ (2006) by Hong Kong artist Pak Sheung Chuen. The work was conceived by a question the artist posed: How much time does it take to breathe in all the air in this room? The video documents the artist collecting the air he breathed with plastic bags until the small apartment was filled. This process took 10 days and visualises a relationship between space and time, measured through his breath. It is an apt primer for the biennial which aims to make space for different ways of relating to place and existing structures.

Yoshinori Niwa, ‘Requesting People in Taiwan Who I Met by Chance To Declare if They Die, Taiwan Will Disappear’ (video still), 2024, 4K single channel video, 10min 27sec. New sequel commissioned by Asian Art Biennial. Image courtesy of the artist.

The tone of ‘How to Hold Your Breath’ is largely sombre, echoing the urgency of climate concerns and geopolitical conflicts around the world. One work that pointedly spoke to the underlying tensions within a local context is Yoshinori Niwa’s video ‘Requesting People in Taiwan Who I Met by Chance to Declare if They Die, Taiwan Will Disappear’ (2024). It features more than 100 people from different ages and walks of life, filmed on the streets in Taichung, making the declaration in the artwork’s title. First made in Taipei in 2014, shortly after the Sunflower Student Movement, Niwa’s request prompts the everyday person he met as well as the audience to question what constitutes a social body. 

Comparing his experiences creating the video in 2014 and 2024, Niwa commented that he felt more tension this time. “I understand that you don’t want to imagine that the country where you live will disappear,” the artist said, noting how some individuals were simply surprised with this phrase. Others, especially among the older generation, rejected saying it. “I do not know whether this is due to the political tensions surrounding Taiwan or the character of the people in Taichung. Nevertheless, it is important for people of different generations to reflect on the role or meaning of individuals within the nation-state.” Regardless of one’s nationality, the confrontational quality of the statement carries through even for viewers in the museum.

Nathalie Muchamad, ‘Breadfruit, Mutiny and Planetarity’, 2024, site specific installation with prints on wool and cotton, wall drawings, wood, clay, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist.

Jasmin Werner, ‘Self-supporting (Selbsttragend)’, 2024, food, daily products, wood, stain, varnish, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist.

Addressing the notion of “Asian Art” within the biennial’s name, ‘How to Hold Your Breath’ embraces a framework that reflects the dynamic and evolving nature of Asia’s diverse regions. Curator Fang Yen Hsiang explains, “By partially detaching from traditional geographical and geopolitical frameworks, the exhibition conceptually embraces the histories of migration, entangled identities, and the material and cultural forms of both human and non-human entities.” This approach explores intricate connections among individuals, communities and other life forms which may have histories tied to Asia.

One interesting direction in which ideas of migration and displacement is explored, is through the movement of food and commodities. Nathalie Muchamad, an artist of Javanese and Kanaky heritage, focuses on the breadfruit motif in her installation ‘Breadfruit, Mutiny and Planetarity’ (2024). The project tracks the history and appropriations of breadfruit tree, a plant that originated in New Guinea which later became a low-cost food that fed the slaves at British sugar plantations. The propagation of the breadfruit from Southeast Asia via Polynesia, the Indian Ocean, and the Caribbean, thus also connects these regions through a shared staple food.

While Muchamad’s work is centred on the historical legacies of a crop, Jasmin Werner’s work ‘Self-supporting (Selbsttragend)’ (2024) engages with the relatively modern practice of sending Balikbayan Boxes. Popularised from the 1970s, they are boxes of food and household items, sent by overseas Filipinos back to their home country as a gesture of appreciation and care. Made up of food items stacked into free-standing compositions, ‘Self-supporting (Selbsttragend)’ is produced in collaboration with the Filipino community from Ugnayan Migrant Ministry, Taiwan’s oldest migrant worker shelter, and Tanzi Catholic Church. While the work’s form appropriates the strategy of the readymade, its production is underpinned by a complex relationship of dependence. The products are chosen by Werner’s collaborators and they will be shipped to the Philippines at the end of the exhibition. In unpacking Muchamad’s and Werner’s works, we see how practices around everyday food items can hold complex narratives and deep webs of connection.

Cetus Kuo Chin-Yun, ‘Because Watching Pacifies’ (video still), 2024, two-channel video installation with 7.1 surround sound and objects, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist.

At times, the connections between regions in Asia are made visible through landscapes or situations that bear an uncanny resemblance. Cetus Kuo Chin-Yun’s film ‘Because Watching Pacifies’ (2024) focuses on two KMT military dependent villages in Taiwan’s mountainous areas and the Zomia Highlands. The Zomia highlands refers to the elevated terrain in mainland Southeast Asia that has historically been beyond the control of governments, such as the “Golden Triangle”, where Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and China meet. ‘Because Watching Pacifies’ follows members of the community as they negotiate the liminal space between borders. The impacts of Cold War alliances between Taiwan and Thailand also become clear through the transfer of agriculture techniques that reshaped the local landscape and industries. Through the storytelling device of a separated pair of twins, the film mirrors these two KMT military dependent villages, teasing out vastly different contexts despite their outward similarity. 

As a biennial, ‘How to Hold Your Breath’ is a timely proposition that speaks to the intersectional nature of our current challenges. Issues relating to labour, environment and technology are inevitably intertwined and require the nuanced understanding of different contexts. The biennial attempts the difficult task of pointing at this layered reality instead of prescribing reductive definitions. By expanding the scope of what “Asia” entails, it also acknowledges the vast networks of interdependence and entanglement, both beyond and within the diverse region.

Asian Art Biennial ‘How to Hold Your Breath’ is on view at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMoFA) from 16 November 2024 to 2 March 2025.

This article is presented in partnership with Asian Art Biennial.