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Here’s my Shenzhen Biennale piece for the Art Newspaper
See here for the interview marathon that happened later

The third edition of the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture opened early December. As a biennale it has two major unique challenges- to combine art and architecture, as well as coordinating a relationship between the two cities of Hong Kong and Shenzhen. The Art Newspaper attended the Shenzhen portion of the event, which was independently curated from the Hong Kong event.
As a relatively new city, 2009 is the 30th anniversary of the city’s founding, also partly due to the city’s close proximity to Hong Kong, the atmosphere in Shenzhen is less inhibited than most Chinese cities.
The multi site exhibition featured works by 64 artists and groups. Works such as ‘Pale Vessel’- a house built out of tofu by the Polit Sheer form office, and ‘Demolition-relocation’ by Liu Xiaoliang, would have been censored by authorities in Beijing, “if they had been aware of it” a journalist from Southern Weekend newspaper pointed out. After the Sichuan earthquake, many buildings were popularly said to have been ‘made of tofu’ – especially schools, killing thousands. Liu’s work referred in part to ‘nail houses’ – people who refuse to move out of buildings slated for demolition.
The Chief curator Ou Ning’s “beautiful lady curatorial group” was a popular talking point with the local press, comprising the curators Beatrice Galilee, Katoko Ota, Weiwei Shannon, and Pauline Yao. The opening ceremony was held on the roof of the Shenzhen government’s offices, the large sprawling Shenzhen Civic Square, featuring a performance by Shenzhen Philharmonic. The large crowd was impressed by an animation of the Shenzhen skyline in 2040, looking something like Bladerunner or Mega City 1 on steroids. Deputy secretary general Xu Chongguan, a senior official with Shenzhen Municipal Planning Bureau told the Art Newspaper he had not seen planning applications for any of the buildings in the animation.
Despite the biennale’s name, Hong Kong and Shenzhen hold two separate events, the Hong Kong event opening earlier. “Hong Kong has one representative on the Shenzhen curatorial committee but we don’t have one on theirs, but my cousin is on the Hong Kong team, so communication was better than before,” curator Pauline Yao said.
The dichotomy of a twin city biennale was highlighted by each city placing their city in the ascendant in their show title. “I am happy to attend the Hong Kong Shenzhen Biennale, Shenzhen city opening event,” Carrie Yau, Hong Kong’s Permanent Secretary for Home Affairs, said, after a succession of Chinese leaders congratulated the opening of the “Shenzhen Hong Kong Biennale.”
The deputy leader of a Shenzhen district told the Art Newspaper: “We want to be a twin city with Hong Kong, but they don’t.” In the exhibition catalogue the organizers stated “we believe that we are closer ..to the target ‘Two Cities, One Theme, One Exhibition.”
The problematic relationship was best illustrated by the work by artist Lara Almarcegu, ‘A Wasteland in the Shenzhen River.’ The artist found a piece of land belonging to Hong Kong on the Shenzhen side of the river that divides the two cities, the result of a river straightening project. The overgrown and abandoned land is fenced off, for her piece the artist wanted to allow public access, but failed to get a permit from the authorities. In his narrative curator Ou Ning pointed out that in the past refugees from China would swim the river to escape to Hong Kong.
The large sprawling show, predominately funded by the local government, was spread across the city as Ou Ning, who is also sound art curator with the Serpentine in London, pointed out to the Art Newspaper he wanted to increase audience participation, with some works even being located in shopping malls.
There were numerous works of note, with a very strong international contingent. The main issue was a perennial problem at shows in China, as audio visual equipment broke down on the second day, meaning a lot of installations were not functioning. Key projects that were successful were those with little reliance on hi-tech. Landgrab City- A geography of spatial prostheses, provided a scaled down representation of the agriculture needed to sustain the city by Joseph Grima, Jeffrey Johnson and Jose Esparza was placed in the middle of a shopping district, and garnered a lot of public attention. The architect team ‘Weak’ presented the strongest work of the biennale with ‘bug dome’ – a bamboo structure built by local migrant workers out of bamboo on some wasteland next to the government offices. A member of ‘Weak,’ Finnish architect Marco Casagrande, told the Art Newspaper that the local migrant workers had turned the piece into their recreation center. “They are from Guangxi, so they knew how to build the structure,” Casagrande said. He was also involved in similar projects after the Sichuan earthquake. Neither piece named the local workers who had been drafted in for the construction.