2016.11.12-2017.3.12

Curators:Raqs Media Collective

Venue:Power Station of Art,Shanghai

In the accelerated landscape of globalization, the 11th Shanghai Biennale turned its gaze toward the potentials of “South–South Cooperation,” envisioning a constellation of artistic practices that radiate across disciplines and geographies. Invited as chief curators, the Raqs Media Collective — whose practice weaves together creation, theory, and curatorial experimentation — conceived the Biennale not as a closure to previous inquiries, but as a renewed vantage point and a point of departure for thinking otherwise.

“Why not ask again? Why not return to the origins, the edges, and the nodes of a question, or of the desire to question? (For to ‘ask’ is both to bring forth a question and to awaken desire.)”

This refrain resonates with Correction, Rehearsal, Story (1974) by Indian activist and filmmaker Safdar Hashmi, which inspired Raqs’ curatorial proposition. In the film’s final sequence, the protagonist — immersed in knowledge and analysis — suddenly finds himself swept into the midst of fleeing peasants and students in revolt. Confronted with unexpected demands, calls for correction, and rehearsals of resistance, he is compelled to retell his own story, caught between the entanglements of memory and the urgency of struggle.

For Raqs, this allegory becomes a lens through which to imagine the Biennale itself. Here, the artworks are not mute objects but protagonists: enmeshed in enigmas, impelled into movement, pressed to raise questions, to wrestle with necessity and difficulty, and to transform inquiry into situated stories.