Symbiosis
Wuhan Biennale
October 5, 2024 - May 31, 2025
Wuhan Art Museum
Participating Artists (in alphabetical order):
Astrida Neimanis, Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor, Bao Yang, Cao Shuyi, Claire Malrieux, Clare Britton, Fei Jun, Guo Cheng, Julian Charrière, Liu Wa, Long Pan, Michael Wang, Sigurður Guðjónsson, Wang Sishun, Wu Xiaohai, Yussef Agbo-Ola, Zhang Qikai
Curator:
Naiyi Wang
Starting from the complex ecosystem of water systems that spread throughout the world, Symbiosis invites internationally renowned artists, scientists, ecologists and climatologists to trace the evolution and spread of 'water systems' in the hope of awakening a multi-dimensional sensory experience of ecological entanglement. There are no clear boundaries between the works on display at this time, with each work penetrating and extending into the next, interweaving into a dynamic network of water systems, outlining the entangled flow between humans and non-humans.
Symbiosis aims to create a 'contemplative moment' for the audience, a complex world surrounded by water, sensing our social landscape through a water systems perspective, exploring the notion of 'symbiontics' in the flow, as well as forming a new ontological approach to equality.
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The Way of Water
Water, as the oldest flowing medium on earth, is both the origin of life and the carrier of civilization. “Symbiosis”, a section of the 2024 Wuhan Biennale, weaves the practices of artists, scientists, ecologists, and climatologists into a dynamic network, taking “Water Systems” as a clue, challenging the cognitive framework of Anthropocentrism and constructing a dynamic “ecological entanglement theater”. Instead of a linear narrative method, the exhibition is structured by the permeability and network of waters, interweaving the works into a speculative ritual of symbiontics - where the boundaries between human and non-human are constantly dissolved, and where technology, nature and myths co-interpret a new version of equality.
The Metaphor of Water Systems and the Sensory Topology of Ecological Entanglements
Over 700 million years ago, the Yangtze River originated in the Bayan Har Mountains as a slender brook. It first flowed southwest through secluded canyons, merging with the Jinsha River, then entered Sichuan province where it converged with the Tuo, Min, and Jialing Rivers. Gathering sacred springs from Tibet, Gansu and Qinghai, it swelled into a mighty torrent that coursed triumphantly toward the sea. Wuhan, located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, is born by the water, as well as thrives by the water.
“Symbiosis” aims to echo the “liquidity” inherent in the theme of “Urban Fluidity” for the 2024 Wuhan Biennale, serving as a continuation and interpretation of the theme. The exhibition starts from the complex ecosystem of water systems that spread all over the world, and by tracing the evolution and spread of “water systems”, it aims to awaken a multidimensional sensory experience amidst ecological entanglements. Artists and scientists from diverse cultural contexts and academic backgrounds around the world have gathered here, and their exhibited works have conducted highly speculative explorations around every crucial and urgent question, constructing a speculative experiment on “symbiontics”. The exhibition abandons the traditional linear narrative approach, interweaving the works into a dynamic network that permeates each other like tributaries of a river system. It invites the audience to immerse themselves in a “submerged moment” enveloped by water, where the boundaries between human and non-human, organic and inorganic, technology and nature are dissolved, and a new ontological equality emerges quietly.
“Symbiosis” is not a manifesto for an ecological utopia, but rather a series of unfinished experiments. From the minerals of the Yangtze basin to the mycelium of the Amazon, from the tremors of obsidian to the AI-generated mutants, the exhibition transforms the water system into a methodology: fluidity, infiltration, and boundarylessness. Here, art is no longer a mirror image of nature, but rather turns into an active medium within the ecological network, catalyzing the audience to reimagine the possibilities of “symbiontics” - as suggested by the fabric temple of participating artist Yussef Agbo-Ola, the answer to the ecology in the future may lie in those overlooked “connection points”.
Material, Deep Time, and Geological Memory
The fluidity of water systems not only shapes geographical landscapes but also carries deep memories of culture and ecology. In this exhibition, the materiality of works becomes the core carrier of ecological narratives. As an artist and social anthropologist, Michael Wang’s artwork Terroir (Yangtze Basin) continues his land painting series. He has used pigments made from minerals collected from seven cities in the Yangtze Basin, compressing geological time into a linear scroll. The minerals in the pigments are both deposits of urban history and slices of the Earth’s evolution, suggesting that human civilization is merely a fleeting wrinkle in geological time.
This contemplation of “deep time” engages in a dialogue with the work Controlled Burn by artist Julian Charrière. The latter employs a drone perspective to traverse open-pit coal mines and abandoned oil fields, juxtaposing the explosive power of fossil fuels with images of Carboniferous creatures, revealing the paradox of the Anthropocene - the “progress” of energy is actually an accelerator of ecological disruption. The work theatrically and poetically traces back the chemical energy that flows deep within the core of the earth and the inexhaustible energy they contain, inspiring the audience to reflect on the evolution of their living environment and to ponder over the changes that have occurred.
The sculpture series Thickens, Pools, Flows, Rushes, Slows is created from huge obsidian fragments. Julian Charlier’s inspiration for choosing this special stone material stems from Robert Macfarlane’s description of his underground travels: “Underground, time passes in different ways. It thickens, pools, flows, rushes, and slows.” The fluidity of a liquid is not merely a pure, abstract flow, but rather a continuous extension of its liquid state, accompanied by and driving the rushing, entanglement, fusion, and regeneration of more energy and substances. The lava erupts from the belly of the earth during a volcanic eruption and cools rapidly upon reaching the surface, finally, the obsidian forms. Obsidian lacks the crystalline structure of a true mineral, but is instead a liquid that solidifies when over-cooled. Both works echo each other, transforming the “liquid memory” solidified after the volcanic eruption into a perceptible spatiotemporal resonance through obsidian sculptures and electromagnetic soundscapes - the fractured patterns of the rocks and the particle-like vibrations of sound jointly point to a non-human material agency.
Wu Xiaohai’s works such as The Moss and Tender Leaf are also concerned with the cycle of materiality, as the artist uses charcoal sketches to capture the vitality of trees and rocks. Charcoal, as a residue from combustion, is both a witness to time and a metaphor for the transformation of natural energy. His ceramic mosaic work, Tree-counted, abstracts organic forms into geometric units, exploring the self-similarity of life on micro and macro scales.
This obsession with material transformation engages in a dialogue with the artist Wang Sishun’s work Apocalypse, which collects stones resembling human faces from around the world, viewing them as the “personalities sculpted by nature”. These stones, formed by time and natural forces, span geography and history, and finally converge into “geological portraits” in the exhibition, questioning the definition of “life” under Anthropocentrism. When rocks are given personalities (divinity, ugliness, evil), can geological agency subvert anthropocentric ontology? Icelandic artist Sigurður Guðjónsson’s multisensory sculpture Perpetual Motion sublimates the movement of matter into a manifestation of “geological will” through the drift of metallic particles and the resonance of electromagnetic soundscapes. The audience is immersed in the movements of the abstract particles, as if wrapped into an endless source surging beneath the sand, perceiving the agency of non-human materials. The artwork responds to the granular texture of the materials in moving images by utilizing stacked electromagnetic sound manipulated through particle synthesis, filling the entire space with a soundscape that creates a captivating and contemplative experience for audience.
Perpetual Motion subverts the traditional role of materials as passive media in art, viewing them instead as participants with a “geological will.” This “multi-sensory archaeology” reveals the deep time sealed in the rocks. As the philosopher Timothy Morton puts it, “The poetry of matter lies in its untamability.”Together, these works dismantle the unidirectional narrative of human domination over nature, transforming the water system into a decentralized model of ecological cognition and constructing a discursive experiment on the interconnection of life.
Algorithms, Mycelium and Climate Allegory
The fluidity of water systems not only shapes the morphology of the Earth’s surface, but also metaphorically represents the interconnectivity of the life network. In the dimension of technological intervention, artists reconstruct symbiotic relationships through algorithms and biological media. Long Pan’s work Fluid Body utilizes 3D scanning of the human body as the substrate for mycelial growth. The “savage proliferation” of fungi disrupts the biological certainty of the human body, ultimately forming a hybrid organism that lies between humus and digital code. Fungi, as the earliest decomposers on Earth, serve here as a symbol of resilience against human control. When AI attempts to generate a “perfect human figure,” the uncontrollability of mycelium precisely deconstructs the rational hegemony of technology. The “creation” of technology and the “transformation” of nature serve as a mutual allegory here, through which the artist constructs a symbiotic ritual encompassing nature, artificiality, and cross-species.
In line with this, French artist Claire Malrieux’s Climate General is more allegorical: she transforms the Gaia hypothesis proposed by biologist James Lovelock into an algorithm-driven “climate machine”, revealing the paradox of the Anthropocene through the nonlinear orchestration of data flows - we are both the destroyer of the Earth system and a parasitic variable in its self-regulation. In the dynamic images driven by data flows, pollution, population expansion, and the greenhouse effect spread like viruses, suggesting that algorithms themselves have become complicit in the Anthropocene. The artist’s work challenges the visual hegemony of Anthropocentrism - when climate data turns into the grammar of the “new nature”, can art reconstruct ecological perception with the logic of machines?
This critique of technological alienation is further explored in No One’s Game by Bao Yang and Liu Wa. This video work documents the process of rainforests being engulfed by palm oil plantations, highlighting the disruption of the ecological chain behind the demand for clean energy. When the camera shifts to the submerged villages, the “sustainable development” promised by technology reveals its absurdity - the “no-man’s land” under the narrative of progress is actually a graveyard for multiple life networks. The artist Cao Shuyi’s Ephemeroptera further subverts the boundaries between biology and technology. The work simulates the calcareous shells of single-celled organisms using 3D printing, and compares its deposition process to the “geological layers” of the digital age. The juxtaposition of microscopic organisms and machine learning algorithms suggests that life intelligence may exist in the intersection of carbon-based and silicon-based systems. These organless calcareous shells are both an echo of the Cambrian explosion of life and a prophecy of the synthetic lives in the future. Through the juxtaposition of self-organization at the micro-scale and machine learning, the artist is skeptical of the privilege of human intelligence - when silicon-based and carbon-based life both share the same algorithmic logic, can ecological poetics transcend species boundaries? These practices imply a post-human aesthetic shift: intelligence is no longer exclusive to humans or AI, but exists in the spread of mycelium, iteration of algorithms, and chaos of climate models.
Artists, employing “cross-species collaboration” as their approach, continuously respond to the interweaving of “symbiotic ontology” and “cross-species poetics” within the water system networks constructed by the exhibition. “Symbiosis” dismantles a series of oppositions fabricated by dualism through the permeability of the water systems. This “symbiontics” rejects the objectification of nature, instead emphasizing the entanglement and mutual constitution (intra-action) across species. As theorist Donna Haraway puts it, “We must learn to coexist with trouble.”Artists rewrite ecological narratives in poetic language, transforming technological criticism into a ritual of interspecies alliance. In this “submerged moment” surrounded by water, the audience is compelled to confront their own ecological responsibilities and catch a glimpse of a possible symbiotic future amidst the resonance of material flow.
The artist Fei Jun’s newly created Haven of Migratory Birds provides a practical blueprint for this “symbiontics”. Through collaboration with aquatic and ornithological studies, the work conducts field research on the current status of migratory bird habitats around the Wuhan Art Museum, develops ecological stations for symbiosis with aquatic ecosystems and for migratory birds to rest, and provides solutions and experimental prototypes for the concept of cross-species symbiosis. Art shifts from representation to intervention, extending the exhibition into an experimental field for cross-species symbiosis. “Symbiosis” attempts to “shape a new concept of equality” - this equality does not stem from human benevolence, but is rooted in the fundamental interdependence of all life (including non-life) in ecological entanglements.
Ritual, Walking, and Ecological Healing
The most subversive aspect of this exhibition perhaps lies in the integration of ecological rituals and everyday actions. Yussef Agbo-Ola’s Aiye: Circulation Temple takes the Yoruba concept of “AIYE” (Earth) as its prototype, transforming the architecture into a traversable “womb”. Audience navigates through a maze crafted from textiles and plant fibers, mimicking the nutrient absorption cycle of roots, thereby materializing ecological awareness into a bodily experience.
Astrida Neimanis, Clare Britton, and Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor’s collaborative work A River Ends as the Ocean is oriented towards the coast, follows the rhythm of the tides, and is performed through a walk, conveying the profound emotional attachment of indigenous people to the water system. The representation of walking along the coast evokes our memories of our ancestors’ life - drinking water to stave off hunger and living in humble dwellings, and also prompts us to rethink what kind of thinking does the water system endow us with. Rooted in the earth, artist Cao Shuyi reimagines the history and future of the coastline amidst the spread of water systems. Her video work Of Shape Offshore attempts to depict a constellation of spatiotemporal events related to “offshore”: transcending specific locations and times, activating elusive and undefinable boundaries, and creating a constantly evolving world of edges in the ever-changing past and present.
The influence of water systems on all living things begins with habitat but extends beyond. The distributed patterns it exhibits also inspire a systematic perspective, which to some extent transcends the paradigm of objectifying or romanticizing water as a resource - thinking not just about water, but like a water system. “Symbiosis” has invited artists and scientists from diverse cultural contexts and academic backgrounds worldwide. The curator aspires to explore the theme of “water systems” from a multidisciplinary perspective, contemplating how water transcends individuals, regions, and national boundaries to connect life. As Astrida Neimanis, an exhibiting artist and ecofeminist scholar, puts it, “The flow and surge of water not only sustain the functioning of our bodies but also connect us with other bodies and the world beyond humanity.”
Without water systems, how can life survive?
The flow of global water systems is both a natural phenomenon and a metaphor for civilization. The fluidity of the water system serves as both the core metaphor of the exhibition and the methodology for curating. Just as the brooks from the Bayankala Mountains converges into currents in the Yangtze River, the various works exhibited also permeate each other like tributaries, weaving into a dynamic network. The exhibition attempts to deconstruct the binary opposition between “human” and “non-human” through the fluidity of “water”, and in the process, awaken a philosophical possibility of “symbiontics” - this ontological view of equality rejects nature as a subjugated object and instead emphasizes interdependence and dynamic penetration in the network of all lives.
“Symbiosis” aims to construct a new ecological poetics: it does not provide solutions, but rather exposes the contradictions and hopes of the Anthropocene through the multidimensional sensory language of art. When the artist Guo Cheng’s mirrored installation Becoming Ripples transforms the audience’s reflections into part of the “artificial landscape”, we are forced to acknowledge that humans are both the perpetrators of ecological disasters and the potential catalysts for a symbiotic future. The exhibition challenges the cognitive framework of Anthropocentrism by tracing the ecological entanglement and material transformation of water systems, and attempts to point towards a new symbiontics that transcends the Anthropocene, at the intersection of art and science. Just as Zhang Qikai’s work Relative Motionless, it transforms the “relative stillness” of physics into a philosophical metaphor through the precise movement of a pendulum stone—when humans acknowledge that they are merely a node in the ecological network, equality is no longer an ethical choice, but will inevitably exist.
However, the exhibition also leaves a lingering question: when art attempts to simulate the complexity of natural systems, might it potentially fall into another romanticized technological utopia? Perhaps the answer lies in the exhibition’s title “Symbiosis” - being symbiotic is not the end, but a constantly flowing process of negotiation. In this process, the role of art is not that of a prophet, but rather a catalyst. It activates the cracks in perception, allowing “humans” to relearn humility amidst the dizzying entanglements of ecology.
