TOBIAS ZIELONY | Taipei Biennial | Whispers on the Horizon | Taipei Fine Arts Museum

The 14th Taipei Biennial, curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, brings together 54 artists from 35 cities, featuring 33 new commissions and site-specific installations. This edition highlights young and mid-career voices, with nearly half of participants born after 1984, and including Tobias Zielony. Whispers on the Horizon explores yearning—a force that bridges past, present, and future, reflecting personal and collective memory, migration, loss, and desire. The exhibition draws inspiration from Taiwanese literature and cinema, engaging objects like a puppet, a diary, and a bicycle as silent markers of memory, while also dialoguing with historical artworks from the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and artifacts from the National Palace Museum. Through these works, the Biennial examines how longing moves across time, culture, and geography, lingering between memory and imagination. It is not about answers, but about the spaces in-between—where yearning whispers.

• Taipei Fine Arts Museum
• 181, Zhong Shan N. Road, Sec. 3, Taipei 10461, Taiwan
• 1 novembre 2025 – 29 marzo 2026

Taking place from November 6, 2025, to February 15, 2026, the 24th Paiz Art Biennial, curated by Eugenio Viola, embraces The World Tree as a universal symbol of connection—bridging cultures, histories, and human experiences across time and space. Inspired by ancestral cosmogonies, the Biennial explores how art can foster empathy, inclusion, and dialogue in an increasingly divided world. This edition presents new commissions by international artists from all five continents, including renowned Italian artist Gian Maria Tosatti, alongside voices from diverse generations, genders, and indigenous and ancestral communities. The Biennial engages deeply with the history, architecture, and identity of the spaces that host it, transforming them into active participants in its narrative. Through installations, performances, and site-specific works, it examines how art inhabits both public and private realms—reflecting global challenges such as conflict, inequality, and environmental change. By invoking The World Tree, the Biennial reaffirms its commitment to art as a bridge between worlds—uniting people, cultures, and ideas while inspiring collective reflection and transformation.

• Guatemala City & Antigua Guatemala
• 6 novembre 2025 – 15 febbraio 2026

Thomas Ruff: A Mindmap on Photography opens on November 8 at the Lishui Photography Culture Center. Spanning over forty years, the exhibition traces Ruff’s journey from early series like Interiors and Portraits to conceptual works such as Nudes, JPEGs, and Substrates. Presented as a “mental map” of his thinking, the show explores photography’s boundaries and its role in shaping how we see and understand the world. The opening coincides with the Lishui Photography Festival, featuring an award ceremony honoring Ruff, a public conversation with the artist, and a series of talks on contemporary photography.

• Lishui Photography Culture Center
• 583 Kuocang Road, Lishui City, China
• 7 novembre 2025 – 28 febbraio 2026

Artist Wael Shawky’s monumental bronze sculpture Crush is now permanently on display at the Deutsche Wildtier Stiftung in Hamburg. The six-metre-tall, four-and-a-half-tonne work explores the changing relationship between humans and animals — from wild to domesticated, from adversary to companion — highlighting the contradictions and tensions of coexistence over time. Positioned at the entrance to the Botschaft der Wildtiere (Embassy of Wild Animals), which opened in summer 2024, Crush complements the foundation’s interactive exhibitions, Germany’s first nature film cinema, and educational programs aimed at fostering a deeper connection with wildlife.

• Botschaft der Wildtiere
• Lucy-Borchardt-Straße 2, 20457 Hamburg, Germania

"Becoming the Sea" presents a sweeping survey of Anselm Kiefer’s work, gathering major loans from museums and private collections across the United States. At its heart is a vast, site-specific installation inspired by the Mississippi and Rhine Rivers—two waterways that carry powerful associations of memory, transformation, and time. The exhibition explores Kiefer’s enduring fascination with nature, history, and myth, tracing the river as a metaphor for the flow of life and the passage of civilizations. Through monumental paintings, sculptures, and landscapes, Kiefer layers materials such as lead, ash, clay, and dried flowers to create richly textured surfaces that evoke both decay and renewal. This immersive presentation invites viewers to reflect on how geography and history intertwine, revealing Kiefer’s poetic vision of humanity’s relationship to the earth and the persistence of memory.

• Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri, USA
• One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri 63110-1380
• 18 ottobre 2025 – 25 gennaio 2026

On November 15, 2025, the Lia Rumma Gallery in Milan will open Thomas Ruff’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery, more than thirty years after their first collaboration in 1991. The show retraces twenty-five years of the German artist’s research, who for over forty years has explored the limits and structure of photographic language, helping to redefine the very nature of photography. Developed across the gallery’s three floors, the exhibition brings together works from seven different series created using various techniques. It offers a comprehensive overview of Ruff’s ability to merge technical experimentation, scientific inquiry, and artistic sensitivity, confirming his position as one of the most radical figures in contemporary photography.

• Lia Rumma Gallery, Milan
• Via Stilicone 19
• 15 novembre 2025 – 10 gennaio 2026