The And, Never End (在視而不見的背後,本質,就在那裡) is a new series of drawings by Taiwan-born, London-based illustrator and multi-media artist Page Tsou (鄒駿昇). Tsou’s detailed pencil-on-paper drawings reverse the traditional idea of portraiture by depicting the back of the subject’s head.
■ Agora Art Project X Space (藝譔堂), 104, Ln 155, Dunhua N Rd, Taipei City (台北市敦化北路155巷104號), tel: (02) 8712-0178. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until Sept. 4
Photo Courtesy of Page Tsou and Agora Art Project X Space
Petject (小動物主體), a portmanteau of pet and project, is a series of photographs by five artists that depict animals, both real and imagined, in a variety of situations meant to reveal the conceptual ideas of the artists who photographed them.
■ Fotoaura Institute of Photography (海馬迴光畫館), 2F, 83, Chenggong Rd, Greater Tainan (台南市成功路83號2樓), tel: (06) 200-8856. Open Wednesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 8pm
■ Until Aug. 14
Photo Courtesy of Fotoaura Institute of Photography
Close Encounter (遇見) is a group exhibit of video installation, photography and sculpture by Kuo I-chen (郭奕臣) and Japanese artists Nobuaki Onishi and Ken Matsubara. Kuo, who represented Taiwan at the 51st Venice Biennale, creates videos that examine themes of insecurity and alienation. Nobuaki, winner of the 2007 Asunaro Prize, makes Nobuaki’s resin sculptures of everyday objects — a woman’s shoe, a strand of barbed wire, a light bulb — that appear both tangible and abstract. Matsubara’s photographs recall Japan’s experience of nuclear war at the end of World War II.
■ Aki Gallery (也趣畫廊), 141 Minzu W Rd, Taipei City (台北市民族西路141號), tel: (02) 2599-1171. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 6:30pm
■ Until Aug. 8
Ultra Combos (參式) consists of artwork by the five-man multimedia collective that goes by the same name as the show title. The exhibition draws on video games as the basis for the work, which is presented as an interactive art installation resembling an arcade.
■ Digital Arts Center (台北數位藝術中心), 180 Fuhua Rd, Taipei City (台北市福華路180號), tel: (02) 7736-0708. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm
■ Until Sunday
JUICY X juicy is a solo exhibition by Hsieh Jia-wen (謝家雯). Constructed using colorful elastic cloth stockings, Hsieh’s large-scale semi-circle installation affixed to the wall at numerous points suggests both order and fragmentation.
■ IT Park Gallery (伊通公園), 41 Yitong St, Taipei City (台北市伊通街41號), tel: (02) 2507-7243. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1pm to 10pm
■ Until Aug. 6
The year was 1991. A Toyota Land Cruiser set out on a 67km journey up the Junda Forest Road (郡大林道) toward an old loggers’ camp, at which point the hikers inside would get out and begin their ascent of Jade Mountain (玉山). Little did they know, they would be the last group of hikers to ever enjoy this shortcut into the mountains. An approaching typhoon soon wiped out the road behind them, trapping the vehicle on the mountain and forever changing the approach to Jade Mountain. THE CONTEMPORARY ROUTE Nowadays, the approach to Jade Mountain from the north side takes an
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