Afra Al Dhaheri, Weighted PAUSE:, 2025
The 14th Taipei Biennial, "Whispers of the Horizon," is running at Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
It is co-curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, co-directors of the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum of Contemporary Art in Berlin. The exhibition features about 150 works from 72 artists across 37 cities and explores the universal drive of yearning — a profound inner desire for love, wealth, or power.
Bardaouil said the exhibition's concept was sparked by the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) painting, “Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains,” which was split between China and Taiwan for a long time. When briefly reunited, the aged scrolls no longer looked like the same painting.
This inspired the central question: Although time makes many things irreparable, why do people persist in yearning to restore the past?
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Afra Al Dhaheri’s large-scale installation is shaped by the repetitive action of forming coarse ropes. The process evokes ideas of labor and production. Influenced by her upbringing in the rapidly changing United Arab Emirates, Al Dhaheri voices a collective yearning for life to slow down: “Rest is not a luxury, it is a necessity.”