SPRING 2007

More and more cities have recognized the potential cultural collateral that hosting an art biennale produces. This has created a proliferation of biennales worldwide. With this increased number, the event of the biennale has become arguably a single homogenous experience. Few have successfully differentiated themselves from others. The studio was challenged to redefine the event and physical environment of the biennale.

The studio project was to liberate the Shanghai Biennale from its current home inside the Shanghai Art Museum. Almost all of the international biennales exhibit the artwork collectively within existing museums or generic exhibition spaces. To challenge this convention and other typical notions of exhibition, the studio distributed the biennale events throughout the People's Park and/or beyond, into the city of Shanghai. This would enable the influence of the biennale to expand beyond the usual jet-setting cultural elite to include the city and its citizens as well as providing the visitor with a biennale experience embedded within the urban fabric. Each project had to provide the organization strategy for their biennale proposal as well as the physical environment necessary for the exhibition of art. Since the biennale is only a two-month long event every two years, the proposals had to consider the consequence of temporary installation versus long-term permanent intervention.