Canvas Magazine

Rooted in historical and local cultural context, the 14th Taipei Biennial – curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath – uses three objects as its departure points, while including further works from the expansive collection of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. The three guiding vessels comprise a puppet from Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s film The Puppetmaster (1993), a diary featured in Chen Yingzhen’s 1960 short story My Kid Brother Kangxiong, and a stolen bike from Wu Ming-Yi’s novel The Stolen Bicycle (2017), each representing a different kind of longing, loss, memory or desire, from private to social and across generations. 

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Hera Büyüktaşcıyan’s work, Destroy Your Home, Build Up A Boat, Save Life (2015) brings attention to survival and life in the face of violence and displacement. The title references the Epic of Atrahasis, an ancient Mesopotamian story in which a man builds a boat to survive a flood inflicted by higher powers to punish humans. The work connects land and sea, life and death, loss and strength, and becomes an act to save memories and knowledge during personal or societal disruption. The artist also reflects on the Istanbul pogrom of 1955, when minority communities (mostly Greek) were violently displaced. Resonating with the biennial’s theme of yearning and human persistence, the rolled-up carpet becomes a symbol of home to be easily moved and carried away in quick departure or, on the contrary, to be laid down to set new foundations elsewhere.