A Taiwanese group exhibition was scrapped days before it was due to open at Central State Museum in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The venue cited building repairs as the reason for the cancellation.
The show, Shifting Grounds: Dissonance, Memory, and Landscape as a Site of Becoming, was curated by Wang Chun-chi and was backed by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture, featuring eight Taiwanese artists.
The museum abruptly announced that it would begin a one-month renovation, cancelling the exhibition and terminating the contract. But a week later, a fashion show was hosted at the same venue, triggering suspicion of external political influence.
The closure comes soon after an incident in July where the names of four artists were removed from a group show on authoritarianism and resistance at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, whose curator has since fled to the UK.
