Flowers, butterflies and femininity — these are the themes that were celebrated at Bridging the World Through Art, an exhibition held earlier this month at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York City. The exhibition featured works by painters Lee Chin-chu (李金祝) and Leontina Pineda Lupiac, from Taiwan and Honduras, respectively.
The exhibition is the second in a cooperative project that was initiated last year to highlight the ties between Taiwan and Honduras. This year’s event was attended by representatives and ambassadors from 20 countries.
Born in Yunlin, Lee had yet to receive any formal training in painting when she met renowned Taiwanese painter Chang Yi-hsiung (張義雄) at his solo exhibition in 1988. Lee, who was 35 at the time, followed Chang to Paris to study painting. There, she received awards for her work at the city’s Spring and Autumn salons in 1990, 1991 and 1992.
Lee is known for her use of bright and vibrant colors. In the oil paintings displayed in New York, she examined feminine beauty with a bold palette of reds and greens that conveys a sense of jubilation and festivity.
Lupiac is herself a story of female strength and courage. A near-fatal car accident in 1999 prompted Lupiac, then 56, to turn to painting as therapy to overcome alcoholism and, later, breast cancer. Now, a decade on, this artist of Spanish, French and indigenous ancestry is widely recognized in the US for a style that blends realism and impressionism, two genres that the artist says draw her closer to God and Nature.
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
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
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s