The title of Malaysian artist Wong Hoy Cheong’s (黃海昌) retrospective exhibit, Days of Our Lives (大時代,好日子), is taken, as you might have guessed, from the soap opera of the same name. Why? Because like a soap opera, Cheong’s work imbues the ordinary with suspense and makes the mundane alluring, according to the artist’s statement. Cheong’s videos, photos and installations touch on issues connected with minorities, human rights, post-colonialism and history.
■ Eslite Gallery (誠品畫廊), 5F, 11 Songgao Rd, Taipei City (台北市松高路11號5F). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm. Tel: (02) 8789-3388 X1588
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3pm. Until Jan. 23
Photo courtesy of Eslite Gallery
The Story of Buddha: The Beauty of Asian Buddhist Sculptures (佛陀的故事-亞洲佛像之美特展) seeks to present the life of Siddhattha Gotama, founder of Buddhism, through sculptural works. In collaboration with the National Palace Museum, Chiayi’s Municipal Museum presents Buddhist sculptures dating from the 4th century to the modern era in three themed sections: The life of Sakyamuni (an honorific name for the sage); understanding Buddhist sculptures; and the world of Buddhism.
■ Chiayi Municipal Museum (嘉義市立博物館), 275 Zhongxiao Rd, Chiayi City (嘉義市忠孝路275號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm. Tel: (05) 278-0303. Admission: Free
■ Begins Friday. Until Feb. 27
Taipei’s Museum of Contemporary Art is currently showing two exhibits worth seeing. The first, Wuti (梧提), presents the dreamy manga-esque paintings and installations of two contemporary Chinese painters, Yang Na (楊納) and Mu Lei (穆磊), who examine notions of beauty. The title of the second exhibit, Chinese Characters Interactive Installation Exhibition (字生字滅─漢字互動三校聯展), pretty much says it all. The installations on show present new ways of looking at and studying the history and development of written Chinese characters.
■ 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. Admission: NT$50
■ Wuti ends Jan. 23. Chinese Characters ends Feb. 12
The Digital Arts Center invites viewers to “experience” the evolution of Taiwan’s digital art scene in Body, Gender, Technology (身體‧性別‧科技). The series of interactive installations, created by 14 artists, presents a time line that takes the form of an “art river.” The exhibit is presented as a dialogue between mind and body within a digital realm, and ponders the concept of existence.
■ Digital Arts Center (台北數位藝術中心), 180 Fuhua Rd, Taipei City (台北市福華路180號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Tel: (02) 7736-0708
■ Until Jan. 23
Main Trend Gallery is currently holding a solo exhibit of works by China-born, France-based photorealist landscape painter Chan Kin-chung (陳建中).
■ Main Trend Gallery (大趨勢畫廊), 209-1, Chengde Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市承德路三段209-1號). Open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 11am to 7pm. Tel: (02) 2587-3412
■ Until Jan. 15
Last week, Viola Zhou published a marvelous deep dive into the culture clash between Taiwanese boss mentality and American labor practices at the Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) plant in Arizona in Rest of World. “The American engineers complained of rigid, counterproductive hierarchies at the company,” while the Taiwanese said American workers aren’t dedicated. The article is a delight, but what it is depicting is the clash between a work culture that offers employee autonomy and at least nods at work-life balance, and one that runs on hierarchical discipline enforced by chickenshit. And it runs on chickenshit because chickenshit is a cultural
My previous column Donovan’s Deep Dives: The powerful political force that vanished from the English press on April 23 began with three paragraphs of what would be to most English-language readers today incomprehensible gibberish, but are very typical descriptions of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) internal politics in the local Chinese-language press. After a quiet period in the early 2010s, the English press stopped writing about the DPP factions, the factions changed and eventually local English-language journalists could not reintroduce the subject without a long explanation on the context that would not fit easily in a typical news article. That previous
April 29 to May 5 One month before the Taipei-Keelung New Road (北基新路) was set to open, the news that US general Douglas MacArthur had died, reached Taiwan. The military leader saw Taiwan as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” that was of huge strategic value to the US. He’d been a proponent of keeping it out of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) hands. Coupled with the fact that the US had funded more than 50 percent of the road’s construction costs, the authorities at the last minute renamed it the MacArthur Thruway (麥帥公路) for his “great contributions to the free world and deep
Years ago, I was thrilled when I came across a map online showing a fun weekend excursion: a long motorcycle ride into the mountains of Pingtung County (屏東) going almost up to the border with Taitung County (台東), followed by a short hike up to a mountain lake with the mysterious name of “Small Ghost Lake” (小鬼湖). I shared it with a more experienced hiking friend who then proceeded to laugh. Apparently, this road had been taken out by landslides long before and was never going to be fixed. Reaching the lake this way — or any way that would