Title of the 16th Shanghai Biennale Announced
The 16th Shanghai Biennale, opening in November 2027, will be titled "LOUDER," with Ferran Barenblit as chief curator.Summary
On November 11, 2026, the Power Station of Art (PSA) in Shanghai announced that the 16th Shanghai Biennale, opening in November 2027, will be titled "LOUDER." Ferran Barenblit, whose appointment was announced in July, will serve as chief curator. Founded in 1996, the Shanghai Biennale is China's longest-running international exhibition, organized by PSA since 2012. "LOUDER" explores how popular culture shapes identity, belonging, and ways of perceiving the world. PSA notes that today, as images, sounds, messages, and stimuli constantly compete for attention, popular culture can generate community and liberation while also producing exclusion, homogenization, and new forms of control. Speaking louder means raising the volume and also asking what becomes visible and audible, what cuts through the noise, and what remains outside perception. The exhibition will examine how visual art perceives, interprets, and remakes these contradictions and how art can intervene in the attention economy. Central to the exhibition are experimental approaches to music and sound, positioned not merely as subject matter but as clues to understanding how contemporary experience is constituted. Rock, punk, hip-hop, electronic music, C-POP, underground scenes, and mainstream expressions are cited as part of a broader cultural ecosystem in which visual art also constantly participates. Curatorial team and program details will be announced later. Barenblit (born 1968 in Buenos Aires) is a Barcelona-based curator who has worked in both curatorial practice and museum management. He studied art history at the University of Barcelona and museum studies at New York University, and served as director of MACBA from 2015 to 2021. Previously he was the founding director of CA2M in Madrid and director of the Centre d'Art Santa Mònica in Barcelona. His work has consistently engaged the social, cultural, and historical forces shaping contemporary life, and he sees art as a space where society tests its conflicts, desires, the imaginary, and possible futures. On his appointment, Barenblit said, "The 16th Shanghai Biennale should belong fully to the field of contemporary art while not closing in on itself. It should be demanding yet legible, accessible yet complex, and able to speak to a broad audience while preserving art's power to resist simplification."
(Source：ART iT)