Curators, the art world’s taxonomists, love nothing more than lumping together disparate works and unifying them under convenient labels. A close second comes spotting the next big thing, the emerging hot artist.
And so it is with MOCA’s SuperGeneration@Taiwan, which features work from Taiwanese artists born after 1980, members of the so-called “Strawberry Generation.”
Much has been made about these artists, who grew up in an affluent environment, after the lifting of martial law, and supposedly struggle to find their own individuality.
SuperGeneration@Taiwan, the larger of the MOCA’s two current exhibits, brings to a close the museum’s examination of this group of artists, who often work in a variety of media.
But more than anything else, this exhibit highlights a trend in Taiwan’s contemporary art scene where the work of, for example, storybook and magazine illustrators such as Mr Red (紅膠囊) or Cola King (可樂王), receive museum space before their careers really get off the ground.
Any “creative industry” professional adept at making unusual noises or designing interiors or fashion is worthy of being seen or heard, it seems. Taken together, the works on display are bland reworkings of earlier exhibits, such as Infantization (果凍時代), and provide few insights into the minds of Strawberry Generation artists. But perhaps that’s the point.
There are, however, some interesting pieces, such as Hsu Tang-wei’s (許唐瑋) mixed media A Virtual Shop (虛幼的貴寶號), which explores contemporary society’s interconnectivity.
The second part of the dual exhibit, XFUNS Gala’08, displays works by mainly Generation X artists, although the title itself refers to X-rays, or the exploration of what underlies the surface of objects.
The idea is encapsulated in the work of British X-ray artist Nick Veasey, who photographs objects such as trumpets and buses to reveal the inner beauty of what is unseen.
Taiwanese artist Daniel Lee’s (李小鏡) fascinating Metamorphing/When & Where, 2008 (演化時空) brings together in one large installation the morphing of humans and animals — ideas that he’s been working on for decades.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless