Taiwan's turn to judge

Taiwan's contributions to the Venice Biennale have gained recognition from the international art community, but this year four graduate students from Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA) have decided to turn things around with a fresh idea and US$20,000.

The students are members of the Hedao Group (赫島社, "awesome island"), which was established to promote creativity in Taiwanese art, as the "Red Island Group" did in the 1920s.

Hedao's projects are designed to create the maximum impact: Instead of manipulating physical objects to create art, they seeks to manipulate the institutions that evaluate art.

They do this by raising money for cash awards to be given at major art exhibitions. This year the "Taiwan Award" of US$20,000 will be handed over to the winner of their choice at the Venice Biennale on June 11.

The Hedao Group intends to subvert the process of cultural colonization and globalization by creating the award. It reasons that Taiwan is a small country that struggles to be recognized in the world of contemporary art, where discourse is dominated by a Western point of view.

What the Hedao Group intends to take to Venice is not a work of art to be judged, but rather a unique Taiwanese viewpoint with which to judge other works of art.

The Hedao Group flier states that "the Taiwan Award seeks to reverse the subject-object relationship, adopting the role of observer and a specifically Taiwanese viewpoint to assess the Venice Biennale."

The Hedao Group raised the cash for the Taiwan Award by going around the country

fundraising. Most of the donations were from individuals and non-profit organizations, rather than large corporations or public agencies.

"There were book clubs that donated, [even] housewives that found ways to save an extra NT$1,000 per month" said group member Lu Hao-yuan (呂浩元).

Besides monetary contributions, the Hedao Group has gained support of another kind. In order to ensure that the Taiwan Award accurately represents Taiwan's viewpoint, the group's members asked accomplished Taiwanese cultural figures from a variety of disciplines to serve as judges for the award.

The panel they assembled includes filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮), TNUA principal and chairman of the CKS Cultural Center Chiu Kun-liang (邱坤良); painter and art historian Lin Hsin-yueh (林星嶽), poet and writer Chen Fang-ming (陳芳明), and folk musician Lin Ku-feng (林谷芳).

The Hedao Group created a stir with their first "meta" art project, An Award for Taipei Biennale. It hopes to continue subverting the politics and structure of arts exhibitions and awards by taking the Taiwan Award to New York's Whitney Biennial and Germany's Kassel Documental X.

The group, plus the judges and accompanying art critics, will head for Venice this Saturday. Deliberations will begin next Thursday and the award will be presented at the Hotel Monaco and Grand Canal, on June 11.

The trophy for the award, designed by Zhuang Wu-nan (莊武男), is a 200-year-old Taiwanese brick encased in Formosan michelia wood, carved with various Taiwanese folk symbols.