When Taiwanese national Lee Chun-hua (李春華) accused Vancouver Airport immigration officials of maltreatment while trying to enter Canada earlier this month, the story stimulated public interest in the barriers Taiwanese sometimes encounter when traveling overseas. Lee’s experience is probably something video artist Chen Chieh-jen (陳界仁) could relate to. The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) refused Chen an entry visa in 2008 under what he later called degrading circumstances.
Taiwan’s place on the international stage and how it is manifested at home and abroad forms the major theme of Foreign Affairs (外交), an exhibition by four Taiwanese artists who represented Taiwan at last year’s 53rd Venice Biennale. In addition to Chen, the other artists are architect Hsieh Ying-chun (謝英俊), Magnum photographer Chang Chien-chi (張乾琦) and video installation artist Yu Cheng-ta (余政達).
“I personally encountered an interviewer’s violent language when applying for a visa at the [AIT],” Chen wrote in his introduction for the show, though in the blurb he does not say what the AIT official allegedly said to him.
Following the AIT incident, Chen set up a blog, The Illegal Immigrant (我懷疑你是要偷渡) (ccjonstrike.blogspot.com), to find out if other Taiwanese had faced similar problems.
“Just days after the blog had been launched, there were already several hundred posts and responses. The posts not only reflect numerous experiences of humiliation and failed applications, but also raises issues about Taiwan’s need for more self-examination in relation to its global position and politics,” he wrote.
In a way, the Venice Biennale symbolizes the kind of humiliating experiences that Chen discusses. From 1995 until 2000, Taiwan exhibited its artists at the “national” pavilion, reserved for participating countries. Under pressure from China, however, biennale organizers shifted the Taiwan Pavilion to the “institutional participants” section, beginning in 2001. It was demoted again to the “collaborative events” section located outside the main exhibition area because of space constraints and China’s continued meddling.
(On a side note, this may have been a blessing in disguise, at least for the artists. Accustomed to thinking outside the box internationally, TFAM, the organizers of the Taiwan Pavilion, chose the Palazzo delle Prigioni, a princely structure located in the heart of Venice’s tourist district, thus ensuring that more than just art buffs would view the Taiwan Pavilion.)
After getting his blog up and running, Chen began work on Empire’s Borders I (帝國旁界 — I), a video that examines, “how the [US] government has used control tactics to plant imperial ideology in the consciousness of Taiwanese, and how after long-term internalization this has become the way in which Taiwan controls ‘others.’”
Chinese brides make up a significant proportion of the “others” in Chen’s video. These women arrive in Taiwan hoping for a better future but face the kind of discrimination Chen experienced at the hands of the AIT customs official.
Chang Chien-chi addresses the sacrifices illegal Chinese immigrants make to raise the living standards of their families back home. He juxtaposes black-and-white photographs of migrants living in cramped and squalid conditions in New York’s Chinatown with color snapshots of their families in Fuzhou, China.
Jiang J. Family, Fuzhou, China, 2004 and Jiang J. Family, New York City, 2008 sympathetically capture the feelings of despondency and loneliness that result when these families are separated. The color version shows a middle-aged woman glancing down sadly as her husband, shown lying on a bed in the black-and-white photo, looks away from the camera while clenching his fist.
With so many husbands separated from their wives, Fuzhou has been nicknamed “widow village” (寡婦村). “They wait for money, for phone calls from New York and reunions that never take place,” Chang wrote.
On a more playful note, Yu Cheng-ta’s Ventriloquists: Introduction (附身[聲]者:介紹) examines the “cracks” in communication that exists when people from different cultures come together.
Yu scouted out foreigners in Taipei and filmed them responding to questions in Mandarin. Using subtitles, he collocates their responses with his own superficial assumptions about those he interviewed. Thinking back to the Lee incident and Chen’s difficulties, one walks away feeling that immigration officials everywhere could gain valuable insight on difference by watching Yu’s videos.
Moving from international to local concerns, Hsieh Ying-chun’s community-based approach to architecture has earned him plaudits at home and abroad. The section devoted to his designs features images of his houses in various stages of completion following natural disasters in Taiwan and China, along with other simple and environmentally friendly structures that use local building materials and labor.
His approach was illustrated to great effect back in 2002 when Hsieh gathered together a retinue of volunteers to erect one of his houses in the courtyard of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, as part of its exhibit Myxomycity. Completed in two weeks, the building provided viewers with a close-up look at what can be done with limited budgets in disaster areas.
That TFAM didn’t do something similar with Hsieh’s work points to a more general problem with Foreign Affairs. Not only does the exhibition space feel cramped — I was jostled a number of times while watching Yu’s videos — but the museum placed the show in its basement, a space typically reserved for emerging artists. With all the talk of increasing Taiwan’s international profile, one might have expected the curators to display the works front and center on TFAM’s first floor. By not doing so, it is hard to avoid the impression that the exhibit was an afterthought.
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