Founded in 1895, the Venice Biennale of Art boasts well over a century of history. The world’s first international biennial, it is divided into the Central Pavilion, the National Pavilions, and Collateral Events. In 1995, Taipei Fine Arts Museum overcame tremendous obstacles and for the first time was able to take part in the Venice Biennale as the representative of Taiwan’s national pavilion. However, the People’s Republic of China later applied official pressure to the Biennale Foundation, and in 2003 TFAM was stripped of permission to participate as the Taiwan Pavilion. But to continue promoting the art of Taiwan on the international stage, TFAM applied to take part as a collateral event.
Even though the exhibition is no longer listed as a national pavilion, its venue, the Palazzo delle Prigioni, is located closeby to the historic Doge's Palace and next to the crowded Piazza San Marco. It also stands along one of the main routes to the Giardini, which hosts the Central Pavilion. Because of this advantageous location and the many years TFAM has spent fostering it as an exhibition site, international artists and cultural elites who come to take part in the Venice Biennale have grown accustomed to informally referring to the Palazzo as “the Taiwan Pavilion.”
For the past two decades, the “Taipei Fine Arts Museum of Taiwan Collateral Event” at the Biennale Arte has been an important milieu for dialogue and engagement between Taiwan and the international art community. Initially, TFAM arranged the exhibition through an open call for works by Taiwanese artists. Then in 1999, sensing a shift in the overall artistic ecosystem, the museum issued an open call for Taiwanese curators. Later, it experimented with other approaches, effectively developing new curatorial strategies that were best suited for the time—hiring a consultative team to select a curator, forming a consultative committee, curation by the museum’s Biennale team, and holding a competition.
From the 1990s to the new century, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum of Taiwan Collateral Event at the Biennale Arte has shared meaningful experiences that tangibly exemplified distinctively Taiwanese trends in culture and the arts, drawing international recognition of the developments in Taiwanese contemporary art and elevating its global visibility. Moreover, given Taiwan’s unique circumstances, “Taipei Fine Arts Museum of Taiwan” has long served as a towering lighthouse guiding the imagination of the international art world regarding the self-determined identity of Taiwan. Because of this significant role, Taipei Fine Arts Museum has treated the many procedures surrounding the management of this exhibition with exceptional thoughtfulness, to achieve the most optimum performance at the Venice Biennale of Art.
SCREEN MELANCHOLY: LI YI-FAN at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia｜Press
61th Venice Biennial Taiwan Pavilion│Website