It's the end of the year and the Taipei Times looks back at some great art moments and peers into its crystal ball to predict five up-and-coming artists/trends to watch out for. In keeping with the festive season, we'll count down like it's New Year's Eve:
5. Tseng Yu-chin (曾御欽) had his video work displayed at Germany's prestigious Documenta exhibition this summer. What was noteworthy was that he was not filling any quotas or participating in a national presentation. Rather he was included because he's an exceptional artist ready to participate at an international level. He recently embarked on a six-month art residency in New York.
4. Sean Hu Chao-sheng (胡朝聖). Okay, he's not an artist. He's a curator. His first experience was with land art and he's curated some notable exhibitions this year such as Lin Chuan-Chu's (林銓居) rice field/painting studio in Dazhi, Fashion Accidentally at Taipei MOCA and Very Fun Park in Taipei's East District (東區). What is remarkable about Hu's curatorship is his inclusiveness. He does not only invite ethnic Taiwanese for his exhibitions, which most Taiwanese curators tend to do, he includes artists and designers from various ethnicities, gender identifications and art practices to participate. Other curators, should take note.
PHOTO: SUSAN KENDZULAK
3. One of the best works created this year was by Yao Jui-chung (姚瑞中). Yao is no novice as he's already exhibited at the Venice Biennale, plus numerous other exhibitions. He's also known for curating shows and having authored several books. But the video he made where he's slowly goose-stepping about the CKS Statue Park in Tashi (大溪) Township, Taoyuan County, hits the bull's-eye. In this age of "desinicization," Yao's mockery of statues and idols is timely, comical and a tad visionary.
2. Number two is not an artist, nor a curator, but rather the notable status of the equality of women in Taiwan's art institutions: Lin Mun-lee (林曼麗) is director of the National Palace Museum; Lai Hsiang-ling (賴香伶) is coming to the end of her two-year contract with Taipei MOCA; Hsieh Hsiou-yun (謝小韞) is director of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and Ava Hsueh (薛保瑕) is director of the National Taiwan Museum in Taichung.
1. Hands down! Our big winner for the year, undoubtedly, is Kuo I-chen (郭奕臣). Kuo seamlessly merges high-tech gadgetry with profound metaphysical concerns making him stand apart in Taiwan's contemporary art scene. He got off to a running start by first exhibiting at 2004's Taipei Biennial, when he was just a student, well, a grad student. This summer his participation in Thermocline: New Asian Waves at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany, brought him acclaim. The Centre Pompidou has bought his work for its collection. In October, he had four simultaneous exhibitions that featured work showing a destroyed earth but which demonstrated humanity's hope for survival. Meanwhile, international curators are flocking to his studio. The art world will have to wait, however, as Kuo just started his military service.
In the next few months tough decisions will need to be made by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and their pan-blue allies in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). It will reveal just how real their alliance is with actual power at stake. Party founder Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) faced these tough questions, which we explored in part one of this series, “Ko Wen-je, the KMT’s prickly ally,” (Aug. 16, page 12). Ko was open to cooperation, but on his terms. He openly fretted about being “swallowed up” by the KMT, and was keenly aware of the experience of the People’s First Party
Aug. 25 to Aug. 31 Although Mr. Lin (林) had been married to his Japanese wife for a decade, their union was never legally recognized — and even their daughter was officially deemed illegitimate. During the first half of Japanese rule in Taiwan, only marriages between Japanese men and Taiwanese women were valid, unless the Taiwanese husband formally joined a Japanese household. In 1920, Lin took his frustrations directly to the Ministry of Home Affairs: “Since Japan took possession of Taiwan, we have obeyed the government’s directives and committed ourselves to breaking old Qing-era customs. Yet ... our marriages remain unrecognized,
During the Metal Ages, prior to the arrival of the Dutch and Chinese, a great shift took place in indigenous material culture. Glass and agate beads, introduced after 400BC, completely replaced Taiwanese nephrite (jade) as the ornamental materials of choice, anthropologist Liu Jiun-Yu (劉俊昱) of the University of Washington wrote in a 2023 article. He added of the island’s modern indigenous peoples: “They are the descendants of prehistoric Formosans but have no nephrite-using cultures.” Moderns squint at that dynamic era of trade and cultural change through the mutually supporting lenses of later settler-colonialism and imperial power, which treated the indigenous as
Standing on top of a small mountain, Kim Seung-ho gazes out over an expanse of paddy fields glowing in their autumn gold, the ripening grains swaying gently in the wind. In the distance, North Korea stretches beyond the horizon. “It’s so peaceful,” says the director of the DMZ Ecology Research Institute. “Over there, it used to be an artillery range, but since they stopped firing, the nature has become so beautiful.” The land before him is the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, a strip of land that runs across the Korean peninsula, dividing North and South Korea roughly along the 38th parallel north. This
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