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With the Taipei Biennial Ahead, Cecilia Alemani Reflects On What Makes an Exhibition Feel Alive

"I'm excited to learn, to be surprised, and to make something together," the curator told Observer.

A few weeks ago, we learned that Cecilia Alemani will serve as the next curator of the Taipei Biennial, one of Asia’s longest-running and most closely watched recurring shows. Alemani, the Italian-born, New York-based director of High Line Art, is best known for “The Milk of Dreams,” her acclaimed 2022 Venice Biennale, which drew more than 800,000 visitors and was the first edition in Venice’s history to feature a majority women artists. More recently, she organized the sprawling SITE Santa Fe International. The 15th Taipei Biennial, organized by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and opening in 2027, will be her first exhibition in Asia. We caught up with her to hear about her early research into Taiwan, the year in biennials and the giant pigeon New Yorkers fought to keep.

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The Venice Biennale you curated was one of the most celebrated ever. May I ask your impression of this year’s?

“In Minor Keys” is a truly exciting exhibition that brought together many voices I wasn’t previously familiar with, and that alone made it a remarkable discovery. I found myself moved to explore the work of artists like Seyni Awa Camara, Annalee Davis, Hala Schoukair, Yo-e Ryou and Ayrson Heraclito, for instance. The overall atmosphere was ebullient and generative; it reminded me of the energy one encountered at biennials in the 1990s, a kind of polyphony of voices that felt genuinely plural rather than programmatic. I admire Koyo’s team for realizing her vision with such care and conviction. Some of my most memorable moments were Mohammed Z. Rahaman’s installation—a hypnotic accumulation of small objects that seemed to dissolve the boundary between personal mythology and collective memory; Alice Maher’s work, which has long drawn on folklore, the body, and the darker registers of the natural world; Alvaro Barrington’s truck, an exuberant stage for encounters, Temitayo Ogunbiyi’s exquisitely delicate drawings; and Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s film that moved between documentary intimacy and something approaching myth.

I had the privilege of seeing your SITE Santa Fe last year and was blown away by how local it was, incorporating everything from Native American sculpture to the travel........

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