SHANGHAI—Curators of this year’s Shanghai Biennale, the seventh, chose as its theme and title “TransLocalMotion,” an exploration of how urbanization affects societies and individuals. The trend, though international, is felt perhaps nowhere more than in China, which may explain why the biennial, though ostensibly also international, with 60 artists from 21 countries, feels dominated by the Chinese.

Given this theme, it seems fitting that “TransLocalMotion,” which opened on September 9 and runs until November 16, is being held at the Shanghai Art Museum compound, a landmark pre-communist-era horse racing club in one of the busiest areas of one of China’s busiest cities. The artistic director, Zhang Qing, is deputy director of the museum and one of China’s most respected art world figures, while the curators are Western: Germany’s Julian Heynen, who has been commissioner of his country’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and Holland’s Henk Slager, dean of Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design.

Visitors are greeted by Chinese artist Chen Zhiguang’s giant metallic insects, part of the installation Big Colorful Ants, which occupies one side of the museum’s exterior. According to organizers, they represent “a gesture of welcoming new migrants into the home of old migrants. In this work, ants turn into the symbol of lives migrating silently.”

The museum’s courtyard is dominated by one of the most popular pieces, by China’s Jing Shijian: a real, decommissioned locomotive that visitors can enter called “Express Train.” In addition to gesturing to the show’s title, it serves as an homage to the late Mao-era program of the 1960s and ’70s that forced the relocation of city-based intellectuals to the countryside.

The biennale draws from an eclectic mix of emerging and established artists, with several of China’s biggest names contributing works. Sculptor Yu Fan offers four horses, executed in his trademark cartoon-like style, right outside the door of the building. Painter Liu Ye’s haunting yet pretty canvasses Missing and Traveller, both inspired by his family’s personal history in Shanghai, dominate a wall on a ground-floor gallery. Perhaps the most memorable installation is by auction-record-making painter and sculptor Yue Minjun, who imposed his signature smiling faces on dozens of dinosaur figures. The sculptures, which range from a few inches to several meters long, occupy a long hallway of the museum, like a big, happy parade.

The contributions from international artists are generally underwhelming, with the exception of New York conceptual art star Lawrence Weiner's Scattered Matter, a signboard bearing the text, “Scattered Matter Brought to an Ascertainable Destiny with the Weight of the World Cusped.” It’s a work that dares you to stop and think, a welcome pause amid the hustle and bustle of “TransLocalMotion.”