15th Shanghai Biennale: Shanghai, China
Current event
Overview
Ragnar Kjartansson is featured in the 15th Shanghai Biennale, Does the flower hear the bee?, taking place at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai from 8 November, 2025 through 31 March, 2026.
The biennale's theme explores communication and intelligence within the art world, addressing the dynamic between the audience, exhibition, and environment. Does the flower hear the bee? aims to examine the intersections of differing models of intelligence, human and non–human, and to learn from both nature and culture.
Throughout Kjartansson's work across a range of mediums, which include video installations, drawings, paintings, as well as in his frequent use of durational, repetitive performance, he explores ideas related to beauty and its banality. A Boy and a Girl and a Bush and a Bird features Kjartansson and his longtime collaborator, Davíð Þór Jónsson, playing a small opus they composed in a rundown, but still tropically functioning, banana plantation on a freezing winter day in Iceland. Written by Kjartansson and Jónsson, the music is filled with longing and is a collage of quotes that range from Franz Kafka to Yoruba funeral songs, all culled from a letter by writer and poet Anne Carson, that she calls "four options for a chorus."
Also included in the presentation are a number of large-scale paintings by Kjartansson from his Weekdays in Arcadia series, landscapes which are inspired by the time the artist has spent shepherding in the countryside of Iceland.
The biennale's theme explores communication and intelligence within the art world, addressing the dynamic between the audience, exhibition, and environment. Does the flower hear the bee? aims to examine the intersections of differing models of intelligence, human and non–human, and to learn from both nature and culture.
Throughout Kjartansson's work across a range of mediums, which include video installations, drawings, paintings, as well as in his frequent use of durational, repetitive performance, he explores ideas related to beauty and its banality. A Boy and a Girl and a Bush and a Bird features Kjartansson and his longtime collaborator, Davíð Þór Jónsson, playing a small opus they composed in a rundown, but still tropically functioning, banana plantation on a freezing winter day in Iceland. Written by Kjartansson and Jónsson, the music is filled with longing and is a collage of quotes that range from Franz Kafka to Yoruba funeral songs, all culled from a letter by writer and poet Anne Carson, that she calls "four options for a chorus."
Also included in the presentation are a number of large-scale paintings by Kjartansson from his Weekdays in Arcadia series, landscapes which are inspired by the time the artist has spent shepherding in the countryside of Iceland.
