Does the flower hear the bee? the 15th Shanghai Biennale

The Power Station of Art announces the grand opening of Does the flower hear the bee? the 15th Shanghai Biennale on November 8th, 2025. The exhibition is curated by Chief Curator Kitty Scott, Co-curators Daisy Desrosiers and Xue Tan, as well as Curators Long Yitang and Zhang Yingying, both selected from PSA’s Emerging Curators Project. The exhibition design is led by all(zone) / Rachaporn Choochuey, Sara De Bondt is the graphic designer, and Sarah Demeuse is the editor. The City Projects of the 15th Shanghai Biennale will be open to the public at several of Shanghai’s iconic urban spaces — Jia Yuan Hai Art Museum, VILLA tbh, Shanghai, Shanghai Botanical Garden-Penjing Garden, and klee klee & friends. During the opening week, the Power Station of Art will host a series of public programs, including performances, roundtable discussions, artist workshops, and special lectures.

Exhibition Theme: Does the flower hear the bee?

Like the flower that “hears” the bee’s wings, the 15th Shanghai Biennale 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 “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.

67 Participating Artists and Collectives from Around the World

This edition of the Biennale will feature over 250 works by 67 individual artists and collectives from around the world, including 16 from China. Over 30 works are commissioned or new.

Participating artists (listed in alphabetical order by last name):

Kim Adams, Abbas Akhavan, Allora & Calzadilla, Francis Alÿs, Ryoko Aoki, Carmen Argote, Shuvinai Ashoona, Alvaro Barrington, Lêna Bùi, Tania Candiani, Maxime Cavajani, Carolina Caycedo, Chen Ruofan, Cheng Xinhao, Sara Cwynar, Dan Er, Rohini Devasher, Miguel Fernández de Castro, Cristina Flores Pescorán, Theaster Gates, Abraham González Pacheco, Brett Graham, Hao Liang, d harding, Ho Tzu Nyen, Ngahina Hohaia, Hu Xiaoyuan, Huang Yongping, Ulala Imai, Aki Inomata, Brian Jungen, Lotus L. Kang, Amar Kanwar, Christine Sun Kim, Ragnar Kjartansson, Jaffa Lam, Lina Lapelytė, Liu Shuai, Sharon Lockhart, Liz Magor, Gordon Matta-Clark, Ari Benjamin Meyers, Audie Murray, Kosen Ohtsubo, Christian Kōun Alborz Oldham, Lisa Oppenheim, Plant South Salesroom, Qiu Shihua, R. H. Quaytman, Walid Raad, Shao Chun, Shao Fan, Heji Shin, Tan Jing, Shannon Te Ao, Luke Willis Thompson, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Gözde Mimiko Türkkan, Hajra Waheed, Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Xu Tiantian, Ami Yamasaki, Haegue Yang, Masaomi Yasunaga, Cansu Yıldıran, Gozo Yoshimasu, Zhou Tao

* Maxime Cavajani and Theaster Gates participate in the Biennale’s City Project at the Jia Yuan Hai Art Museum. The works of Rirkrit Tiravanija, Chen Ruofan, and Zhou Tao are on display at both the Power Station of Art and the Biennale’s City Project at the Jia Yuan Hai Art Museum. Liu Shuai participates in the Biennale’s City Project at the Jia Yuan Hai Art Museum and VILLA tbh, Shanghai.

Exhibition Design: Walking a Garden-Like Landscape

The 15th Shanghai Biennale centers on interactions between different life forms. The exhibition unfolds as an open landscape—a space to wander through rather than move along. Artworks seed throughout the Power Station of Art—anchored in the grand hall, threaded through circulation paths, tucked into enclosed rooms and gallery spaces. It is not a path to follow but a terrain to inhabit—where artworks, architecture, and visitors co-exist in shifting relations.

The scenography treats the building itself as landscape. Raw concrete blocks—the same industrial vocabulary as the architecture—form a man-made terrain throughout the space. Like rockwork in a garden that shapes how you see the scenery, these blocks offer different vantage points for viewing the artworks. They are utilitarian and designed for a second life: after the exhibition, they can be upcycled rather than discarded.

The design takes its cue from gardens—not as decoration, but as spatial principle. Like a Chinese scholar garden or Japanese stroll garden, the exhibition reveals itself progressively. As you move through, sightlines shift and new compositions emerge. Enclosed rooms offer moments of immersion, a different quality of attention. There is no prescribed route, only invitation. The exhibition offers moments to wander, to stop, not to rush but to rest and reflect among others. Visitors become part of the ecology—another life form moving through and shaping the space. The exhibition design team, all(zone) / Rachaporn Choochuey trusts visitors to find their own rhythm—generous enough to wander in, structured enough to discover. These pauses aren’t interruptions but essential, acknowledging that attention deepens with time, that reflection happens in stillness as much as in movement.

City Projects

The City Projects of the 15th Shanghai Biennale aim to have a generative momentum. Beginning at PSA, the projects progressively summon, relocate, displace, and spread into multiple landscapes—from garden fences in urban neighborhoods (e.g., VILLA tbh) to open fields on the outskirts (Jia Yuan Hai Art Museum), from carefully cultivated bonsai in botanical gardens (Shanghai Botanical Garden) to native grasses growing freely on balcony gardens (klee klee)—and over the course of the exhibition, will reach further corners of Shanghai…

These back-and-forth passages resemble successive and affective “bee paths.” As the public experiences art in different places, every pause, touch, and conversation helps catalyze the mingling of art and everyday rhythms — eventually, through perception, movement, and encounter, one quietly attunes to those “moments of abundance.”