Shanghai Biennale
Does the flower hear the bee

Immersed in Allora & Calzadilla’s sprawling installations Penumbra (2025) and Phantom Forest (2025), visitors were taken aback by both their visual presence and their poetic resonance echoing through the entrance of the exhibition in the form of scattered petals. Right there and then, the notion of sensing and feeling across multiple life forms adopted by the 15th Shanghai Biennale, Does the flower hear the bee, registered with amplitude before setting foot in the show. 

Led by Canadian curatorial force Kitty Scott, alongside co-curators Daisy Desrosiers, Xue Tan, Long Yitang, and Zhang Yingying, this edition took on an ambitious feat with its lineup of sixty-six international artists, and it delivered boldly and powerfully. Set across three floors of the museum, the exhibition was an exploration of the senses, from Tan Jing’s newly commissioned sculptural and olfactory installation Second Skin (2025), to Tania Candiani’s sound sculpture Prologue II. Resonant Blossoms (2025), to Christine Sun Kim’s large-scale painting intervention Heavy Relevance (2025). The multiplicity of media included, along with the diverse national representation, commanded a permeating context of emotional in-betweenness, escalating hybridity, and lingering absence. An interweaving of sentimental and cultural reflections ensued, offering imaginative space for perpetual contemplation and deciphering.