The title of the tenth Taipei Biennial, “Gestures and Archives of the Present, Genealogies of the Future,” includes everything but the term hammered throughout the exhibition: history. Curated by Corinne Diserens, this biennial departs from the 2014 edition helmed by Nicolas Bourriaud on the theme of accelerationism. Where Bourriaud’s apocalyptic-yet-seductive exhibition meditated on humanity’s impact on the environment, with a large contingent of rising-star artists utilizing high-tech processes, this year’s largely monochromatic show returns to such concerns as documentary, spirituality, and the legacy of colonialism. Though not explicitly stated, this biennial engages dialogues about identity currently taking place in the institutional art world. Diserens, in her curator’s statement, describes her methodologies as “performing the architecture, performing the archive, performing the retrospective.” The second point is most salient: artists’ creative use of archives is the exhibition’s through line. But the architecture of the museum itself isn’t performed so much as left bare: a stage for other gestures to accumulate. The third phrase nods to Retrospective (2012–ongoing), a work by choreographer Xavier Le Roy re-presenting his past dances, that will only take place in the galleries this December and January. The exhibition, occupying two of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum’s three floors, represents …