(excerpt)
Ahead of the entrance to the ground floor galleries of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, is an apt introduction to Small World, the 13th Taipei Biennial curated by Freya Chou, Reem Shadid, and Brian Kuan Wood.
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The effect of Spacy is not unlike Wang Wei's mosaic Mirror, which is viewed from the other side of the building's courtyard void through another line of windows from the exit of this particular gallery. On this side of the museum, a giant image of a bunker from Virilio's 'Bunker Archaeology' series is pasted onto a wall, just ahead of a corridor where a long vitrine presents the 32 screenprints comprising Seher Shah's Notes from a City Unknown (2021).
Created between 2014 and 2021 when Shah lived in New Delhi, pages of architectural-style blocks are accompanied by poetic titles and reflections. These include 'City of Testimonies' which notes 'the weight of her failed nations'; 'City of 1947', referring to the year of India's partition; and 'Destiny blinded by artificial light and real estate'.
Shah's installation heralds the tonal shift on the second floor, which opens with a single print from Virilio's Bunker series. The photo is hung on a single wall that acts like a gateway into a section of Small World that leans into postwar political themes bearing down on the present.