Canadian curator and writer Kitty Scott has been appointed chief curator for the 2025 Shanghai Biennale, making her the first woman to organize the exhibition since its start in 1996.

“I feel very fortunate to join my respected colleagues who have organized previous iterations of the biennale,” Scott said in an exclusive interview with Artnet News on Wednesday. “Working in Shanghai, I’m reminded of the accomplished women from Asia and the Asian diaspora shaping the global art ecosystem, like Yuko Hasegawa, Mami Kataoka, Clara Kim, and Gong Yan, as well as artists like Yoko Ono and Haegue Yang.”

Scott is a veteran of the Canadian contemporary art world, and has held prominent positions at various international galleries. She has been the curator of Modern and contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, chief curator at London’s Serpentine Gallery, and the curator for the Canadian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale.

The title and theme for her upcoming Shanghai show, which will run at the Power Station of Art, is “Does the Flower Hear the Bee?” It was inspired by the intricate relationship between flowers and bees: Flowers can detect the buzzing of nearby bees and respond by sweetening their nectar to attract them. “It’s a fascinating discovery that made me think differently about the kinds of intelligence around us,” she said. “We humans can no longer imagine ourselves as having a monopoly on intelligence or communication. ‘Does the Flower Hear the Bee?’ asks us to imagine a wider network of communicative agents collectively shaping the world and each other.”

The Power Station of Art in Shanghai, the site of the city’s biennale. Photo courtesy the Shanghai Biennale.

Scott became the first female chief curator at the National Gallery of Canada in 2020, but was dismissed in 2022 amid a controversial restructuring. Reflecting on that, she said, “Progress in such appointments is fragile. In Canada, the major institutions are now all led by men, though until recently, many were led by women. I hope we see women in these leadership roles again soon.”

When asked how she plans to bring a unique perspective to the Shanghai Biennale and address concepts such as the Global South in her curatorial approach, Scott said: “ I am deeply interested in following the artists’ eyes and ears and learning with them. Art is a means of creating provisional communities and we need to find new ways of being together in the world, new ways of connecting and communicating. That means embracing the perspectives of the Global South, which the so-called mainstream art world has only begun to recognize in the past couple of decades, as well as voices that have been marginalized within the hegemonic centers of artistic production. That said, the boundaries that have long distinguished North and South seem to be less relevant than ever, with more flows and exchanges, more hybridization—all qualities we find in the most exciting and relevant contemporary art.”

The next Shanghai Biennale will open in November 2025.