Since 2015, the Shenzhen Contemporary Art Biennale has held four editions. Taking the opportunity of the fifth edition, we attempt to outline the development trajectory and value pursuits of the Shenzhen Contemporary Art Biennale. The exhibition has specially set up a section titled "Recreating Presence — A Retrospective of Past Editions of the Shenzhen Contemporary Art Biennale," which not only compiles forewords, posters, and other documents from previous exhibitions, but also displays the physical copies of the past exhibitions' eponymous catalogs for on-site visitors to browse. 

Diagram of the development trajectory and value pursuits of the Shenzhen Contemporary Art Biennale

In terms of continuity and variety, we are trying to distill some actions and ideas from the past practice and content of the Shenzhen Biennale of Contemporary Art, so as to recreate the “presence” of the past four editions of the Biennale by structural retrospection.

2015 The 1st Shenzhen Biennale of Contemporary Art - The Art Exhibition of the 35th Anniversary of Shenzhen Special Zone’s Establishment in Art Gallery of Shenzhen University

As one of the most potential and competitive cities and the primary experimental field of China's reform and opening up, Shenzhen has been developing miraculously in various aspects including the economy. This young and energetic city was given an opportunity to express itself with art - The Art Exhibition of the 35th Anniversary of Shenzhen Special Zone’s Establishment and the 1st Shenzhen Biennale of Contemporary Art, which is also the first biennale of contemporary art sponsored officially by Shenzhen. From this exhibition, we recognized Shenzhen's energy and innovation, inclusiveness and aspiration, as well as the practical approaches and attitudes on the social form that blends the East and the West.

This exhibition also tried to sort out the unique developing path of Shenzhen’s culture and has presented not only Shenzhen’s economic achievement but also its bi-directional value. Inwardly, it’s about finding the cultural identity and the sense of belonging. Outwardly, it’s about exporting the local culture and showing the city's spirit.

2015 The 1st Shenzhen Biennale of Contemporary Art and The Art Exhibition of the 35th Anniversary of Shenzhen Special Zone’s Establishment: Shekou Exhibition

As one of the opening programs of Value Factory whose theme is “Make a World”, The Art Exhibition of the 35th Anniversary of Shenzhen Special Zone’s Establishment and the 1st Shenzhen Biennale of Contemporary Art – Shekou Exhibition invited more than twenty artists, who concerned themselves with city construction and different means of expression, from Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Chongqing and showed artworks of different forms, such as painting, installation and sculpture.

The exhibition was held in the old factory building, creating a dialogue across time and space that would not only benefit the development of contemporary art in Shenzhen with more exchange and collision of ideas, but also bring society more experimental interaction among different subject areas.

2016 The 1st Shenzhen Biennale of Contemporary Art and The Art Exhibition of the 35th Anniversary of Shenzhen Special Zone’s Establishment: Guangming Public Art Exhibition

Different from the previous two in Art Gallery of Shenzhen University and Shekou Value Factory, this exhibition was held in Guangming New District, an open venue where people work, live, study and relax. Seven pieces of public art are shown in public spaces where local residents engage in daily activities. The exhibition created an environment different from usual venues like art museums. These artworks integrated into the living environment of the city reminded people to appreciate both art and the surrounding world. Given the public setting, this exhibition also tried to explore some relevant questions, such as the reform of cities in China, and the relation between artworks and city construction and all.

Along with the exhibitions in Art Gallery of Shenzhen University and Value Factory, Guangming Public Art Exhibition wrapped up the Art Exhibition of the 35th Anniversary of Shenzhen Special Zone’s Establishment and the 1st Shenzhen Biennale of Contemporary Art with a significant stroke, connecting the past, present and future of art in the marvellous city of Shenzhen.

2017 City as Museum: Refocusing - The 2nd Shenzhen Biennale of Contemporary Art

Under the impetus of urbanization, Shenzhen’s art museums also have unprecedented achievements in development. Equipping cities with art museums has become an ongoing fashion, fermenting a big leap phenomenon of “Art Museum Era”.

The transition from an art palace focusing on collection, research and display to the cultural institution of knowledge production in public domain has shaped art museums into a long-term influence on the generation of urban culture. An art museum has become a medium for cultural exchanges in communities, an icon of the open minds taking in diversified cultures, as well as a method to know the region and to look into the world. The facts that museums show urban cultures and that museums exist in the city help evolve the city into an art museum without walls.

This edition’s Biennale has assembled different limps and organs to form various urban art groups into a broader framework of urban culture, and to explore from multiple angles the close relationship between the art museum itself (from a concrete institution to an abstract concept) and the current urban and cultural development.

2019 Concept, Form and Daily Life: New Start - The 3rd Shenzhen Biennale of Contemporary Art

The re-exploration of the two most important concepts of art - “concept” and “form”– is not limited to the metaphysical philosophical field of cognition, not to launch another conceptual revolution, nor to return to some aesthetic order of form, but to probe into the evolution of artistic practice in a contemporary context as contemporary art is being integrated, indisputably, into everyday practice.

At the turn of art towards daily life, the changes of its concepts and forms are closely related to the background of the times, social changes and cultural trends. Relevant in-depth experiments are being carried out on the concepts and forms in art to explore individual survival practice and subjective emotions, intervene in society by entering the public domain, and to integrate the methodologies of other disciplines such as sociology, anthropology and computer science. By reviewing the concepts and forms in contemporary art and presenting such practices by means of sampling, this exhibition reflected upon the distance between Chinese contemporary art and the audience, and reconstructed new aesthetics in the renewal of concepts, all of which may allow the significance of contemporary art in everyday practice to come anew into the public sight.

2021 Uncharted Territory - For a Change: The 4th Shenzhen Biennale of Contemporary Art

The context of art practice has changed profoundly in the second decade of the 21st century. The new reality has opened up an uncharted territory for art institutions and artists and renewed the connections between them. The unknown and the unimagined are both driving locally rooted institutions to explore better self-development capability and practice, motivating artists to rethink new pathways, and promoting periodic large-scale exhibitions to look for ways to deal with the uncertain prospect.

The 4th Shenzhen Biennale of Contemporary Art extended its “self” geographically from Shenzhen to Guangdong province, and took the initiative to redefine, reconstruct itself and rethink its art practice. It attempted to find a new path in the age of rapid change by studying artists and pan-institution practices and examining local biennales generated by soaring economic growth.