Lin Shu-min installed holograms of people's heads into the floor for his popular piece titled Glass Ceiling. The viewer steps on and looks down upon the various portraits of people from around the world. Lin said his work implies that we are all in a certain place trying to achieve a higher plateau.
This is the fourth time that Taiwan has exhibited at Venice.
Entitled Magic at Street Level, the China-Hong Kong Pavilion includes three artists: Ellen Pau, Ho Siu Kee and Leung Chi Wo,whose work reflects the quick pace and alienation of urban life in the former colony. The show is curated by Chang Tsong-zung, owner of the Hanart Gallery.
Ellen Pau's Recycling Memory is a two-part video installation. In one video, a camera set at a fixed point on a Hong Kong coastal highway records passing vehicles during a 24-hour period. The cars and trucks speed by in a blur, yet some of the vehicles come into occasional focus satisfying the viewer's desire to see the image in focus.
The second installation contains a semi-circular screen along one wall. A projector that rotates back and forth records the traffic on a busy highway. This double image of the moving cars sets up a cinematic narrative, for it seems that we are observing one of the film's characters driving past us.
Ho Siu Kee uses his body as metaphor in the video Body Memory. In this work the blindfolded artist repeatedly marks a cross in the air while trying to hit the center point of a red X on a screen. It is intended to show the futility of the human body in trying to exact itself from the geometric precision of social control.
Leung Chi Wo works with negative spaces. After photographing the skylines of Venice and Hong Kong with a pinhole camera, he combined the two, thus creating an abstract shape. Bakeries in Venice baked cookies of this shape and sold them in vending machines placed around the city so that people could "consume a piece of the sky."
Even a prestigious art exhibition such at the Venice Biennale is not immune to the current worldwide political situation. In the Biennale's official publication, most of the national pavilions are listed under "Participating Countries." However, the Taiwan pavilion was not included in that list, but was only referred to as the Taipei Fine Arts Museum under the heading of Cultural Institutions. The same treatment was also given to the Hong Kong pavilion, which was only referred to by its organizing body.
Given that these two pavilions are not officially acknowledged as national sites, the high quality of the art was particularly noteworthy.
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