Does the flower hear the bee? (Extended version)
Chief Curator: Kitty Scott
Exhibition Design: all(zone) / Rachaporn CHoochuey
Graphic Design: Sara De Bondt
Editer: Sarah Demeuse
Artist:
Maxime Cavajani, Chen Ruofan, Theaster Gates, Liu Shuai, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Zhou Tao
Nov 8, 2025 - Mar 31, 2026
The 15th Shanghai Biennale takes its cue from recent scientific discoveries about the interactions between different life forms. Like the flower that “hears” the bee’s wings, this exhibition aims to operate at the intersection of differing models of intelligence, both human and nonhuman. It is based on the belief that recent art provides us with a privileged space for such investigations, offering an embodied and interconnected sphere in which communities may form stronger bonds with what eco-philosopher David Abram has called “the more-than-human world.”
We live in a moment of great uncertainty and global emergency that has given rise to a widespread sense of disorientation. Our world is transforming at a pace that eludes our capacity for comprehension, leaving us feeling bewildered and uncertain. If a return to the past is impossible, art offers us potential pathways out of despair and malaise, helping us to find emergent forms-of-life and new modes of sensorial communication amid this instability.
Conceived in dialogue with the ideas of artists, curators, intellectuals, musicians, poets, scientists, and writers, Does the flower hear the bee? recognizes that much depends on our capacity to sense the world around us and attune ourselves to its diverse array of intelligences. Its hopeful vision rests on art’s ability to orient us towards an unknown future.
Does the flower hear the bee?(Extended version) is curated by Chief Curator Kitty Scott.
Chief Curator: Kitty Scott
Kitty Scott is a curator and writer. She is currently the Strategic Director at Shorefast and the Fogo Island Arts residency program in Canada. Previously, she served as Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa; the Carol and Morton Rapp Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario; Director of Visual Arts at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity; Chief Curator at the Serpentine Gallery; and Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Canada.
Scott has organized exhibitions for numerous artists, including Francis Alÿs, Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, Chen Peizhi, Peter Doig, Geoffrey Farmer, Theaster Gates, Brian Jungen, Lin Yinting, Gordon Matta-Clark, Silke Otto-Knapp, Ron Terada, and Jin-me Yoon.
She co-curated the 10th Liverpool Biennial (2018) and presented Geoffrey Farmer’s work for the Canada Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017). She was also a member of the core working team for documenta 13 (2012).
Scott is a member of the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art and the International Committee for Museums and Collections.
Artists
Maxime Cavajani
Maxime was born in 1988 in Martinique, France. Lives and works in New York City, USA and Paris, France.
Chen Ruofan
Chen Ruofan was born in 1996 in Hubei, China. Lives and works in Shanghai.
Theaster Gates
Theaster Gates was born in 1973 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Lives and works in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Liu Shuai
Liu Shuai was born in 1992 in Shandong, China. Lives and works in Hangzhou, China.
Rirkrit Tiravanija
Rirkrit Tiravanija was born in 1961 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Lives and works in New York, USA; Berlin, Germany; and Chiang Mai, Thailand
Zhou Tao
Zhou Tao was born in 1976 in Changsha, Hunan Province, China. Lives and works in Guangzhou, China.
Installation View
Theaster Gates
Composite Meditation, 2025
4 pieces wood-fired stoneware with manganese glaze; 3 pieces wood-fired stoneware and leather; 1 stoneware with glaze; bricks
Courtesy of the artist
Theaster Gates
Tea Storage, 2025
Library books
Courtesy of the artist
For this intervention in the Jiayuanhai Art Museum library, Theaster Gates proposed 25 categories for selecting books, all of which are broadly related to his ongoing interest in what he terms Afro Mingei, which aims to merge the history and cultural contributions of Black Americans with the Japanese Mingei movement's reverence for vernacular beauty, utility, and care. Some of the subjects that informed this specific selection of 300 books are: Shinotism, Mingei, Japanese architecture of Chinese gardens, Black music in China, and Chinese tea culture.
-Theaster Gates
Composite Meditation 2025
4 pieces wood-fired stoneware with manganese glaze; 3 pieces wood-fired stoneware and leather; 1 stoneware with glaze; bricks
Courtesy of the artist
Over the last 20 years, I have had the privilege of spending a significant amount of time in Tokoname, a small town in the souther central region of Japan. It is known as a city that created ceramic industrial ware focusing primarily on large storage containers, flower pots,and Dokan, which are sewer pipes. I came to Tokoname as a participant in a homestay program and committed myself to thinking about the relationship between my Black experience in the United States and how craft has transformed my ideological and material understanding of the world. For this exhibition, I wanted to consider the implications of clay and the ways in which it holds known and unknown complex encounters between China and Japan. I participate in this conversation as an outsider to both places and as someone who, through craft, has benefited immensely from these two great cultures. I'm interested not only in how spiritual truths were passed on, but also agricultural knowledge, craft knowledge, knowledge of the human spirit, and commerce.
-Theaster Gates
In Composite Meditation the very soil of Tokoname marks a site of re-sacralization, or post-sacralization, harkening back to the journey of Buddhism from India to China to Japan, Japan to China, and China to India. The praying figure was glazed in partnership with the studio of Takuro Kuwata in Tajimi, Japan.
-Theaster Gates
Composite Meditation, 2025
4 pieces wood-fired stoneware with manganese glaze; 3 pieces wood-fired stoneware and leather; 1 stoneware with glaze; bricks
Courtesy of the artist
Maxime Cavajani
Fogo (1–37), 2025
Marker, watercolor, colored pencil, and latex paint on paper
During an extended stay on Fogo Island in Newfoundland, Canada, I learned about handmade red paint, which was used on small structures that surround houses, some built directly on the water.
The preparation of this red was straightforward: red ochre was mixed with cod liver oil and animal blood, when available. These elements were boiled over a fire for a few days, sometimes weeks, and then applied to the wooden walls. The legacy and knowledge of this process is bound to a history of cod fishing that has evolved through generations of land occupation and migration. These human patterns are in turn connected to geological histories and resources that are found, collected, foraged, fished, and hunted.
-Maxime Cavajani
Nowadays, codfishing is allowed again, after a long period of cod depletion. Fishing models have changed, but the hues of red remain. The alkyd paints now used are industrially made—common references are Safety Red, Bright Red, and Maritime Red.
On Fogo Island, rocks exude a red sweat. Rust is a manifestation of salt. The full moon is sometimes of a brighter red than the sun. Every night, the light that signals the entrance to the harbor blinks red. The winds, as they peel off the outer skins of the sheds and stages, also make one’s cheeks blush. My long walks are red. Now my drawings are, too.
-Maxime Cavajani
Maxime Cavajani
Fogo (38), 2025
Yarn, hand-dyed wool, burlap with contributions by Lillian Dwyer and Millicent Dwyer from the Winds and Waves Artisan’s Guild of Tilting, Fogo Island
Maxime Cavajani
Fogo (39), 2025
Video, color, sound, 10:27 min
All works courtesy of the artist
Chen Ruofan
I use discarded fabrics from everyday life and make a canvas that I think of in terms of a software application. The painting, a still life, resembles a frame from a video simulation where the underlying threads become the focus of the image. I invite viewers to lift the loose strings.
In painting The Minutiae of Melting Ice, (Oct13), I used software simulation to recreate the surface of the sea I witnessed on one particular day. Birds are circling around, looking for ice that is no longer there. I infused this surface with worry as if adding another filter with which to see it.
Dust (still frame 191F) is a sketch of frame 191 of Dust, a digital animation that replicates my firsthand experience of the dusty environment of a factory: the density of the air, the turbulence created by the operation of the machines, and the sunlight trying to penetrate the dusty glass windows. I wanted to evoke empathy and inspire a deeper understanding of the complex challenges faced by marginalized worker communities. During my visit to the factory, I was disturbed by the sight of workers coughing in the dust-filled space; one worker confided in me that he had become used to working in this unhealthy environment.
-Chen Routan
Chen Ruofan also presents work at the Power Station of Art, Shanghai, the Biennale's main venue.
The Minutiae of Melting Ice, (Oct13) 2024
Oil on canvas, linen, cotton, silk, organza, polyester, cotton thread, linen thread, silk thread, aluminum, beech wood
(Right)
Oil on canvas, linen, cotton, silk, organza, polyester, cotton thread, linen thread, silk thread, beech wood
All works courtesy of the artist
(Left)
Dust (still frame 191F) 2024
Liu Shuai
(1)
The Distance Between the Nest and the Grave Is a Single Tree: I, 2025
Stones, seeds, paper, etc.
Courtesy of the artist
(2)
The Distance Between the Nest and the Grave Is a Single Tree: II, 2025
Branches from abandoned bird nests, bird bones, heater, glass sphere, feathers, etc.
Courtesy of the artist
(3)
Your Blood, My Blood, 2025
Two-channel video installation, fireworks, ashes of naturally deceased mosquitoes, wood, water container, etc.
Courtesy of the artist
(4)
Nostalgia of Red Fire Ant: I Don’t Belong Here, I Don’t Belong There, 2022
Two-channel video installation
Courtesy of the artist
The Distance Between the Nest and the Grave Is a Single Tree: I 2025
Can one hear the fall of a bird? On October 6, I saw a dead sparrow by the roadside. From experience, I guessed it had died from the unseasonal heat.
When sparrows move on the ground, they do not run; instead, they advance in short hops—pausing, glancing back, observing, alert, and then lightly taking the next step.I designed a “sparrow version” of hopscotch in the courtyard, based on the rhythm of a sparrow’s hops. As visitors play, they unknowingly imitate the sparrow’s tempo and gestures, briefly approaching the life movement of the sparrow being remembered.
At the same time, I invented a micro-biography for the sparrow’s final thirty days. Each entry corresponds to one day and is printed on a small card. These cards are scattered throughout different corners of the exhibition in chronological order.
-Liu Shuai
Liu Shai also presents work at VILLA tbh, Shanghai, as part of the Biennale’s City Project.
Item Title Two
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Item Title Three
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The Distance Between the Nest and the Grave Is a Single Tree: II 2025
In a heron habitat, I discovered scattered bird bones. Among them lay a single glass sphere. I inferred that the bird swallowed it by mistake and eventually died beneath the tree. Which meant that the sphere had once been carried through the air by the bird, and had once warmed to over 40 degrees Celsius—the bird’s body temperature.
It is a sorrowful fable: a manufactured object intruding into the world of birds, taking on the guise of fruit. What the bird swallowed was not merely the wrong material, but a human-made illusion. Amid the bones, the smooth surface of the glass sphere still reflects the shadows of trees and the sky.
Now, the glass sphere is placed within the exhibition space, as if powered by the bird’s ghost. I also collected branches from abandoned bird nests, which I used to assemble a long arrow shaft. For the fletching and arrowhead, I used feathers and fragments of bone. This arrow represents the life of a bird: breeding, migrating, and falling.
-Liu Shuai
Your Blood, My Blood, 2025
A mosquito lives for about thirty days.When one hovers near me for a whole day, it is as if someone has spent more than two years accompanying me.She drinks my blood, carrying a part of me toward another body’s warmth, then drifts away to places I will never reach.She become extensions of my bodily memory, fragments reflecting my own life.The mosquito breaks the integrity of boundaries between living beings, revealing that no organism is truly sealed. It unsettles our ideas of wholeness, of borders, of control and privacy.
I never strike the mosquitoes that have drunk my blood in my room.When they die naturally, I collect their bodies, cremate them carefully into fine powder.Part of the powder I keep; the rest I mix with an accelerant to make fireworks.When the fireworks are lit, the mosquitoes and a part of myself burn together in the air.You carry traces of my body’s memory as you continue to live, until time dissolves us both.
-Liu Shuai
Nostalgia of Red Fire Ant: I Don’t Belong Here, I Don’t Belong There 2022
When I was stung by a red imported fire ant in a remote rice field in Guangdong, the sharp pain made me think of its journey. It’s ancestors had once hidden in exported cargo, traveled on human transport, and left their hot and humid homeland in South America. In a land that is not theirs, they continue their ancestral way of life, yet have become invaders.
This village lies on the other side of the Earth, in Argentina, one of the fire ant’s native lands. As the ants dig their nests underground, I envisioned them longing for home, trying to carve a tunnel through the Earth that could lead them back.
Using sugar from Argentina, I wrote near the anthill a line from a local mountain song, “问你乜人不知年，几多河海变成路” (Time passes, and rivers and seas turn into roads), and a lyric from an Argentine song, No Soy de Aquí, Ni Soy de Allá (“I’m not from here, nor from there”). These verses about time and identity became reflections of the fire ants themselves. The traces of sugar were carried back to their nest until they disappeared.
-Liu Shuai
Zhou Tao
The Axis of Big Data, 2024
Single-channel video, 57:34 min
© Zhou Tao
Co-produced by M art Foundation, Hong Kong
Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space
The Axis of Big Data unfolds amidst greenery, clouds, fog, and the limits of machine technology. The difficulty in locating the scenery becomes a metaphorical exploration. Visible and invisible scales intersect, navigating the extremes of expansion and contraction. The digital cloud intertwines with the terrestrial realm, encapsulating the delicate dance between the tangible and intangible.
This way, filming allows me to loosely compile landscapes. Whether intentionally or not, these moving images create a place in which the subject—the big data center—is obliterated or hollowed out, leaving only the occasional sound from behind or the projected light that dislocates the landscape. A vague conjecture accompanies my action and observation: my filming appears to transform the camera into a temporary means of dividing a space. I am not sure if my action attracts or repels the center’s desire to depict a future of “smart life,” or if it produces hallucinatory fragments.
-Zhou Tao
Zhou Tao also presents work at the Power Station of Art, Shanghai, the Biennale’s main venue.
Rirkrit Tiravanija
untitled 2025 (my body is filled with waiting), 2025
Digital print on canvas
Courtesy of the artist
I usually describe my text works as road signs. Like when you drive on a highway and you drive by a big sign and pick up whatever of the words written on it. It's about whether that gets into your consciousness or not. I always find it interesting how they suddenly show up in the middle of nowhere, totally out of context. You read it because it stands out, and it does have some effect, whether you agree with it or not. I'm interested in this floating attention—that and the phenomenon of so many people running around wearing t-shirts not realizing what they say. I see a parallel between the two.
-Rirkrit Tiravanija
Rirkrit Tiravanija also presents work at the Power Station of Art, Shang- hai, the Biennale’s main venue.
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