Passing Scenes: New Landscape Painting From Four Viewpoints (掠影 — 新風景四人展) presents 50 Western-style landscape paintings informed by an Asian sensibility from four contemporary artists: Shiau Bei-chen (蕭北辰), Ke Wei-kuo (柯偉國), Lin Chi-yu (林芝宇) and Cheng An-chi (鄭安齊).
■ Cathay United Art Center (國泰世華藝術中心), 7F, 236 Dunhua N Rd, Taipei City (台北市敦化北路236號7樓). Open Mondays to Saturdays from 10am to 6pm. Tel: (02) 2717-0988
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3pm. Until Oct. 30
Teerawat Mulvilai’s first residency project four years ago at Taipei Artist Village explored the lives of Thai migrant workers living in Taiwan. With Tropical Plant, his current project, the Thai performance artist and documentary filmmaker seeks out the subjects he interviewed four years ago to see how they have managed to retain their own identities while making a life for themselves in Taiwan.
■ Grass Mountain Artist Village (草山國際藝術村), 92 Hudi Rd, Taipei City (台北市湖底路92號).
Open Wednesdays to Sundays from 10am to 4pm. Tel: (02) 2862-2404
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 11am. Until Oct. 24
Ten emerging Taiwanese artists offer different perspectives of life in the city through painting, photography and installation in Crowded Paradise (擁擠的樂園).
■ Shin Leh Yuan (SLY) Art Space (新樂園藝術空間), 15-2, Ln 11, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 2, Taipei (台北市中山北路二段11巷15-2號). Open Wednesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 8pm. Tel: (02) 2561-1548
■ Reception on Saturday at 5pm. Until Oct. 17
Watch Time Watching (看時間看) is a solo exhibit by Kao Chung-li (高重黎). Kao employs different techniques derived from film and animation to explore the nature of the moving image and its influence on our perceptions of time.
■ Tina Keng Gallery (大未來耿畫廊), 1F, 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號一樓). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 7pm.
Tel: (02) 2659-0798
■ Until Sept. 26
After several years of silence, installation artist Shy Gong (施工忠昊) returns with Taike Fantasy (台客幻想曲). The work consists of nine two-dimensional images and uses a “comical and satirical approach to portray the bitter-sweetness in Taiwanese society,” aspects that are meant to exemplify taike (台客), a once pejorative term now employed to celebrate Taiwanese culture. The reality, however, is that these “digital paintings,” with their geometrical structures resembling microscopic organisms, adds little to our understanding of the genre, the “Taike” in the title seemingly little more than a sobriquet to attract people to the exhibit.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei), 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Tel: (02) 2552-3720. General admission is NT$50
■ Until Oct. 31
Her Story — Photographic Works From the Museum’s Collection (她們的故事 — 館藏女性圖象攝影展) examines the “progress of a woman’s life cycle,” in an exhibit that attempts to capture the “collective memory of countless ordinary women.” According to the National Museum of History’s press blurb, this includes women “in many different roles: working women, mothers, models, etc.” Let’s hope the “etc” means more than simple patriarchal assumptions about the role women should play in society.
■ National Museum of History (國立歷史博物館),
49 Nanhai Rd, Taipei City (台北市南海路49號).
Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm.
Tel: (02) 2361-0270. General admission is NT$30
■ Until Oct. 24
With subject headings such as “Straight Talk,” “Don’t mention politics, religion or sex!” and “Subversive Arguments,” the Yingge Ceramics Biennial seems intent on contemporizing this often-staid medium. The biennial, entitled Korero — a Maori term that suggests an exchange of information or dialogue — brings together 43 artists from 17 countries and offers an interesting look at different approaches to ceramics, including contemporary manifestations along with more traditional forms.
■ Yingge Ceramics Museum (鶯歌陶瓷博物館), 200 Wenhua Rd, Yinge Township, Taipei County (台北縣鶯歌鎮文化路200號). Open daily from 9:30am to 5pm, closes at 6pm on Saturdays and Sundays.
Tel: (02) 8677-2727. General admission is NT$99
■ Until Oct. 31
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