Within this institutional context, “aligning with the international art system” naturally became a central goal for the Taipei Biennial, and the exhibition’s structure consequently leaned toward an “international” orientation. This raised a critical curatorial and institutional question: how could local perspectives be reinforced within this existing framework? Such considerations typically manifested in several areas, including the proportion of Taiwanese artists represented in the exhibition, the ways international curatorial themes were linked to local social contexts, and the degree of institutional control retained over curatorial decision-making. For instance, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum has increasingly opted to invite international curators directly rather than relying on open calls, while also showing reluctance toward more experimental curatorial approaches—such as the collective practices exemplified by ruangrupa in documenta 15—as a way to minimize institutional uncertainty. Moreover, the most recent edition of 2025, Whispers on the Horizon, incorporated works from the museum’s permanent collection for the first time, which can also be understood as a strategy to reassert local cultural context and identity.

In addition to achieving cultural visibility recognized by the international art system and ensuring the criticality of curatorial themes, the Taipei Biennial’s long-term goals have also included supporting cultural strategies linked to urban and regional development and nurturing the local art ecosystem. Hsiao Shu-wen (蕭淑文), associate researcher in the Exhibition Planning Division at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, noted in an interview that, without budgetary constraints, her ideal Taipei Biennial would be dispersed across the entire city—similar to the model of the Lyon Biennale—creating a network of cultural activity across urban spaces during the biennial period. Another as-yet-unrealized aspiration is to invite a Taiwanese curator who combines strong international connections with the capacity to produce distinctive curatorial discourse to lead the Taipei Biennial.

However, under current institutional conditions, these aspirations continue to face multiple constraints. The realities of budgetary limits and the long-standing mandate of internationalization make it difficult for the Taipei Biennial to shift toward a different operational model in the short term. Pressure from conservative members of the city council also adds another constraint, since a publicly funded museum like the Taipei Fine Arts Museum must constantly negotiate between curatorial experimentation, political accountability, and the expectations of established cultural policy.

As a result, this exhibition mechanism remains caught along the axis of tension between the “international” and the “local”: it continues to be subjected to expectations and scrutiny, while also remaining an ongoing object of discussion in cultural policy and art criticism.

Game of Biennials

In fact, the biennial is itself a kind of cultural game formed under specific historical conditions. It emerged from European exhibitionary systems, presenting artistic forms and aesthetic frameworks that originated on the European continent, and was subsequently reproduced across different cities and regions alongside the global expansion of modernity. Within this network, the circulation of curators, artists, and institutional discourses has further consolidated certain aesthetic norms and curatorial paradigms on a global scale. In this sense, the biennial is, from the outset, a cultural form rooted in European—indeed Western—historical conditions and traditions.

Once this is acknowledged, we are confronted with a more fundamental question: within this historical structure, are we willing to participate in this game, and if so, how should we participate? For whether one chooses to follow the rules of the game or to critique and resist them, each position inevitably produces its own forms of discontent.

If we decide to participate in this game, another set of questions arises: are the rules themselves truly fair? Are all participants genuinely equal within this framework? What forms of oppression might be embedded in the structure of the game, and what undesirable effects might they subtly produce? For instance, does the system conceal the mechanisms of cultural hegemony—processes that may marginalize, devalue, or even contribute to the disappearance of more vulnerable cultures, traditions, and forms of knowledge or craftsmanship? Or might such hegemonic structures also shape the movement of capital, intensifying global inequalities in its distribution? For example, financial flows generated by the art market may be disproportionately directed toward Western centers, further deepening global class divisions.

Might this game, under the appealing rhetoric of “demonstrating national cultural strength” or “enhancing a city’s global brand,” in fact obscure such consequences? Amid the increasingly complex conditions of contemporary financial systems and geopolitical realities, these questions can no longer be easily reduced to earlier geopolitical binaries such as “West versus East” or “North versus South.” Whether manifested as cultural domination or capital extraction, such dynamics often operate simultaneously at both global and local levels. Yet local forms of oppression and exploitation may remain subtle and largely invisible—either because they occur at a geographic or psychological distance from us, or because they are shielded by the convenient, and often hypocritical, principle of “non-interference in the internal affairs of other states.”

Yet if resistance is necessary, the question becomes how such resistance might take place. Should it occur outside the game, and if so, how effective could such a position or intervention be? Or is it possible to resist the game from within its own structures? And if so, how might such resistance be enacted?

One possible strategy is to treat Western art and the biennial itself as a medium of expression. Through this exhibition form—originally shaped by European art institutions—it may become possible to articulate local concerns in response, or to foreground the very problems embedded in the game itself, including reflections on Western cultural hegemony, the structural dynamics of the global art market, the unresolved legacies of colonial and postcolonial histories, and so on.

This is not to suggest that every biennial must take these issues as its central theme. Rather, it would already be meaningful if such questions could be considered in both the planning and implementation of exhibitions, and be made visible in some form or at some level. In this way, it may at least become possible to mitigate some of the inevitable discontents produced by the historical and structural conditions within which the biennial operates. Rather than resolving these tensions entirely, such awareness may instead allow biennials to operate as spaces wherein the contradictions of the global art system can be openly acknowledged and critically negotiated.