by Faye Campbell // Dec. 16, 2025
Yearning is an existential reality, a natural consequence of being alive. In our very beings, at the deepest atomic level, we are anchored and driven by desire, longing and wishfulness. At times, we are even driven by the desire to get rid of this sentiment. It is a universal truth, a binding or divisive force, woven through every dimension and cadence of life. ‘Whispers on the Horizon,’ the 2025 edition of the Taipei Biennial, curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM), situates this yearning at its conceptual core. Through a constellation of artistic vernaculars, Bardaouil and Fellrath trace the contours of this emotive state—this verb—as a lens for articulating our current historical moment, engaging contemporary questions while simultaneously imagining new modes of being within an ever-shifting world.
The selected works—by 54 artists from 35 cities—approach this theme of yearning from multiple vantage points ranging from the personal to the geopolitical, from matters of deep intimacy to broader reflections on the fractured times we inhabit.
Ivana Bašić: ‘Passion of Pneumatics,’ 2020-2024, custom cast & slumped glass, stainless steel, pink alabaster, blown glass, breath, pneumatic hammers, pressure, custom race-car exhaust manifolds, custom circuit, microphones, mixer, speakers, air compressor, wax, white alabaster, bronze, oil paint, 700 × 350 × 150 cm // Courtesy of the artist, Albion Jeune and Francesca Minini. This work has been made possible with the generous support of Leonie Lang and Marc Müller, image courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Tucked around a corner on the first floor and found in the garden below, Ivana Bašić’s works draw on childhood memories of national rupture and conflict, tracking a search for hypothetical coherence and unity in the aftermath. Womb-like, alien, almost bionic, her sculptures synthesize the primordial with the cyborgian: slick, quasi-organic surfaces meet sinuous metallic limbs that read as both tentacle and pipe. Yet somehow, these extraterrestrial forms emit a sort of tenderness, a motherlike softness in their unfamiliar forms.
Ivana Bašić: ‘Metanoia,’ 2025, produced in collaboration with Saba Mahdavi & bespoke.Sur-Mesure Engineering Studio, concrete, blown glass, race cars exhaust manifolds, breath, pneumatic circuit, wax, copper, grounding rods, alabaster, pressure, stainless steel, 350 × 350 × 250 cm // Courtesy of the artist, Albion Jeune and Francesca Minini, commissioned by Taipei Biennial 2025. This work has been made possible with the generous support of Leonie Lang and Marc Müller, image courtesy of the artist
On the upper floor, Hsinchu-based artist Ni Hao’s works are as exciting as they are strange, appearing like a moment of quiet provocation. They convey a shared intimacy that is extended to the viewer, who is invited to look in as though to peer over a shoulder. Resin feet gesture as fetish videos purchased by the artist play on a loop, socks are removed efficiently and toes wiggle playfully through the screen. In certain ways, it subtly mocks the voyeuristic tendencies of exhibition-goers and of contemporary society at large—caught in the remixed, rewound, ever-spinning axis of images and information spun through social media.
Ni Hao: ‘Sock series,’ 2025, videos, mixed-media installation, dimensions variable // Courtesy of the artist, Commissioned by Taipei Biennial 2025, image courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Articulations of longing are, however, timeless. In the Biennial, this yearning is also expressed through engagement with the archive, reactivating historical works from the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and the National Palace Museum through new contexts. One work in particular made me pause, turn around, and look back again: Shiy De-Jinn’s 1975 ‘Young Man with Long Hair.’ A shirtless man is reposed in a chair, his hands softly framing his body, his gaze reaches out beyond the frame’s limits, past the viewer’s ear. It is a suspended moment between lovers, between friends—I feel I’ve caught a glimpse of something through an open window.
SHIY De-Jinn: ‘Young Man with Long Hair,’ 1975, oil on canvas, 100 × 74cm // Collection of Taipei Fine Arts Museum; Yu Ji: ‘Flesh in Stone – Spontaneous Decision No.1,’ 2021, cement, iron, 140 × 85 × 85 cm // Collection of Jenny Yeh, Winsing Arts Foundation, image courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum, photo by Lu Guo-Way
Conceptually, the Biennial also seeks to address a yearning specific to Taiwan, for global recognition in light of its geopolitical positioning within its historical context. With this in mind, I wonder what the Biennial might look like outside of the walls of what is, effectively, a stack of white cubes? How might it have interacted with the alleys of the city—Bašić’s metallic tendrils snaking through a side street, past potted figs and doorways? Is the architecture of a place not an archive itself, a repository of collective memories, actions, desires? In ‘Whispers on the Horizon,’ the notion of home is also a pulsing undercurrent that feels deeply related to this universal sense of yearning. It speaks to both the geopolitical and the historical, but also to the quieter, more intimate intimations of the word, at once familiar and elusive.
Edgar Calel: ‘K’obomanik (Gratitude for everything that lights up and turns off before our eyes),’ 2025, stones, rope, soil, ceramics, water and digital screens, dimensions variable // Courtesy of the artist, Mendes Wood DM, Sao Paulo; and Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala City, Commissioned by Taipei Biennial 2025, image courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Edgar Calel’s work, ‘K’obomanik,’ whispers towards a desire for ancestral knowledge and the activation of long rooted traditions. His work draws from the ceremonies of the Kaqchikel Maya from San Juan Comapala, Guatemala. Hanging stones, cocooned in the gauzy curtains on the second floor, appear to be illuminated from within, suspended and still; lit for the ancestors.
Monia Ben Hamouda: ‘Aniconism as Figuration Urgency (Post-Scriptum),’ 2025, laser-cut iron, spice powders, 202 × 160 × 0.3 cm // Courtesy of the artist, ChertLüdde, Berlin and Selma Feriani, Tunis/London, commissioned by Taipei Biennial 2025; Ya’aburnee (ينربقي) – Untranslated Fragment I, Ya’aburnee (ينربقي) – Untranslated Fragment II, 2025, Thala marble, Courtesy of the artist and Selma Feriani, Tunis/London, image courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Monia Ben Hamouda’s installation, composed of inscribed stones retracing the path to a familial burial site in Tunisia, are placed contemplatively alongside piled spices under a curved, calligraphic sculpture. The works exist in quiet harmony. The scent of cinnamon, paprika and chilli, shaping the contours of remembrance and longing, a collective sharing that is aroused through the activation of sense creating a tangible connection to something ephemeral—to loss and cultural memory.
Turning to the intimate, the quotidian, Shizuka Yokomizu’s three-screen video work is a meditation on her elderly mother’s practice of gardening; an homage to finding the sublime in the everyday, the sacred in the quotidian. The churning of soil, the planting of seeds, the dirt under fingernails.
Shizuka Yokomizo: ‘Recipients,’ 2025, multi-screen video installation,
Dimensions variable // Collection of the artist, courtesy of Wako Works of Art, Tokyo, commissioned by Taipei Biennial 2025, image courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum
One of the very first works one encounters on the main floor, and the last one I went back to revisit, is Omar Mismar’s ‘Still My Eyes Water’ (2025). A resplendent bouquet of fabric flowers native to Palestine, they reach in all directions, caught in time. The textile plants articulate the yearning for a place that is unlikely to exist in the same form again, a yearning for a future still fraught with uncertainty; a longing for plants, for food, for scents and home.
Omar Mismar: ‘Still My Eyes Water,’ 2025, natural fabrics, pottery, mixed media, 160 × 80 × 80 cm // Courtesy of the artist, with the contribution of Yu-Ying Chan (Ying Hua Art Flower), Commissioned by Taipei Biennial 2025. This work has been made possible with the generous support of Mrs. Naila Saadeh and an anonymous patron, image courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Perhaps this thematic yearning is not a pendulum that swings between the intimate and the geopolitical, but instead is imbued in all things, large and small. Something irrevocably intertwined at all times; tied together, collective. In it, I find a hope for Biennials that speak an Esperanto of sorts—a language we can all understand, that mouth the words of universality and speak of a desire for home. The desire is simple: to be near a loved one, to bear witness to daily and holy rituals, for a future that still engenders hope—despite it all, expressing the totality of longing itself.
Exhibition Info
Taipei Biennial
Group Show: ‘Whispers on the Horizon’
Exhibition: Nov. 1, 2025–Mar. 29, 2026
taipeibiennial.org
No. 181號, Section 3, Zhongshan N Rd, Zhongshan District, Taipei City, Taiwan 10461, click here for map
