For this Mother's Day weekend there are two art events worth seeing: a recently opened exhibition of female artists and the gala closing ceremony tomorrow for the Dihua Public Art Project.
In May, we often think of flowers, of brightly hued springtime bouquets and blossoming cherry trees, and the new exhibition, Shrub of Flowers at the Hong-gah Museum (
One of the exhibition's great strengths is that it doesn't look like a typical women's art show, as it barely contains any opening petal imagery or cliched works about the female body. Most of the works are in traditional fine arts media and include oil paintings on framed canvases, glazed ceramic objects, and a couple of sculptural installations. The exhibition is also noteworthy since it does without trendy media, such as interactive works and digital imagery that have grabbed most of the attention in recent exhibitions.
It's not too often clay works are included in contemporary fine art exhibitions, as clay has been relegated to the domain of crafts arts, but the ceramic artists in Shrub of Flowers show the versatility of clay, that it is not just for making vessels but is a durable substance that can take on the role of other materials and metaphors.
Su Shu-mei's (蘇淑美) large bed and chair seem to be constructed from small metal coils that appear snake-like, but it is entirely made of clay. Hsu Mei-ling's (許美鈴) 2m-tall tiered wedding cake looks fragile and as though its icing is melting on the spot, but it isn't a real cake. These ceramic pieces seem to say you must look past the superficial appearance of things to discern their real meanings.
Unfortunately, most of the oil paintings look like academic exercises of last century's abstract art and do not give a sense of what it must be like for a woman artist who is painting in Kaohsiung now. The paintings are surprisingly void of giving a sense of time and place and even authorship for that matter.
One of the best works is the installation by Chen Yen-yi (
An enclosed room has a wall with white slats that let you peek in, but the doorknob is a spiny cactus whose thorns prevent you from trying to open the door. Inside the room are small
terracotta pots that sprout out feminine clay hands with razor sharp fingernails. These femme fatale flowers create repulsion and attraction at the same time. This work does not present the view of woman as a delicate sentimental rosebud but rather as an entity to approach with caution.
The Dihua Sewage Treatment Plant Public Art Project will host its closing ceremony tomorrow. Several music and theater performances and a buffet are scheduled from 7pm to 9pm in front of the former police station that is now an alternative art space on Hami Street next door to the Pao-an Temple.
You may want to come earlier in the day to help glue colorful tiles to finish artist Lily Yeh's 17m-by-17m mosaic at the Taipei School for the Hearing Impaired (台 北 市 立 啟 聰 學 校) at 320 Chungching N Rd, Sec 3 (臺北市重慶北路三段320號).
Performance notes:
What: Shrub of Flowers
Where: Hong-gah Museum, 5F, 260 Da-yeh Rd, Qiyen MRT (
When: Until May 22
Tel: (02) 2894 2272
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