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 (
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.
PHOTO: MEREDITH DODGE, TAIPEI TIMES
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.
PHOTOS COUTESY OF TFAM
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 (
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 (
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 (
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ！). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
At Computex 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) urged the government to subsidize AI. “All schools in Taiwan must integrate AI into their curricula,” he declared. A few months earlier, he said, “If I were a student today, I’d immediately start using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini Pro and Grok to learn, write and accelerate my thinking.” Huang sees the AI-bullet train leaving the station. And as one of its drivers, he’s worried about youth not getting on board — bad for their careers, and bad for his workforce. As a semiconductor supply-chain powerhouse and AI hub wannabe, Taiwan is seeing
Jade Mountain (玉山) — Taiwan’s highest peak — is the ultimate goal for those attempting a through-hike of the Mountains to Sea National Greenway (山海圳國家綠道), and that’s precisely where we’re headed in this final installment of a quartet of articles covering the Greenway. Picking up the trail at the Tsou tribal villages of Dabang and Tefuye, it’s worth stocking up on provisions before setting off, since — aside from the scant offerings available on the mountain’s Dongpu Lodge (東埔山莊) and Paiyun Lodge’s (排雲山莊) meal service — there’s nowhere to get food from here on out. TEFUYE HISTORIC TRAIL The journey recommences with
RSS