Esther Lu Curates 'This Is Not A Taiwanese Pavilion' at Venice Biennale with Works by Behr, Hsu, and Šedá

Esther Lu has curated 'This Is Not A Taiwanese Pavilion' at the Venice Biennale, featuring projects by Bernd Behr, Chia-Wei Hsu, and Kateřina Šedá with the collective Batežo Mikilu. Located at Palazzo delle Prigioni, Castello 4209, San Marco, the exhibition explores paradoxes of identity and representation through memory, historiography, and perception. Lu describes the title as a speech act that creates ambiguous spacetime for Behr's 'Chronotopia' and serves as an aesthetic reference for Hsu's 'Marshal Tie Jia', which uses green screen techniques. The curator notes the title mirrors Šedá's project 'This is not a Czech Pavilion'. Lu first visited the biennale in 2005 while assisting Taiwanese artist Chen Chieh-Jen as an interpreter, an experience that revealed the art world's scale and networks. She aims to address both art professionals and the general public, with events during the vernissage and a workshop for young curators to develop local critiques. Lu expresses honor in presenting the project but seeks to resolve representation issues for a de facto country, hoping to project criticality within the biennale's framework. She looks forward to seeing pavilions from Lithuania, Britain, France, Germany, Thailand, and Korea, as well as Massimiliano Gioni's exhibition.