Small World Cinema is a collaboration between Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) and SculptureCenter. It features a selection of 20 moving image works from the 13th edition of the Taipei Biennial, titled Small World. The overarching theme of the Taipei Biennale deals with the dynamic nature of our world, where proximity can bring us closer to each other, but distance can shrink our confines and separate us, shedding light on the inherent ambiguity of the term.

Sohrab Mohebbi, director of SculptureCenter, was inspired by the theme of the biennial after a visit to TFAM. The works of over 50 international and local artists and musicians are brought together and curated by Freya Chou, senior writer and editor Brian Kuan Wood, and Director of Beirut Art Center Reem Shadid. Nineteen new works and commissions have been included in this iteration, creating an ambience in the museum which invites visitors to interact with the installations and explore alternative ways of perceiving and applying the experience that we learned from the pandemic. The curators have stated that:

The 'Small World' is a lonely and entitled place that we have lost parts of ourselves and our societies to, but it may also be a place that welcomes strange acts of refusing to scale up or down, to amplify, unplug, move, or stay put. It might lure us towards illusions of impossible permanence and simplicity, towards absolute primacies and intoxicating authenticities that surpass all influences, but it also encourages us to betray the need to translate and be understood, to please others for some eventual benefit that never arrives.

Small World Cinema is conceived as a glimpse into this fragmented world of high-spirited hopes and lurking anxieties, with its four programs displayed across the lower-level galleries in SculptureCenter. It showcases works spanning from 1989 to 2023 by such artists as Tekla Aslanishvili, Yin-Ju Chen, Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze, Jumana Manna, Bahar Noorizadeh and many others.

Taipei Biennial, established in 1998, is one of the longest-standing biennials in Asia. Small World Cinema is open from January 25 – March 25, 2024. More information on this exhibition and related activities can be found at the ScultpureCenter website.

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