Chen Yin-ju’s (陳瀅如) first solo exhibit in Taiwan after spending close to a decade working in San Francisco presents a new series of video, installation, photography and drawing that focuses on the function of power within society, particularly its racist and nationalist manifestations. With Border (境) she narrows in on the “geographical, ideological and political borders” that define the West and suggests, somewhat conventionally, that these boundaries are socially constructed.
■ Cafe Showroom (場外空間), 462 Fujin St, Taipei City (台北市富錦街462號場外空間), tel: (02) 2760-1155. Open daily from 11am to 9pm
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3pm. Until July 1
Photo Courtesy of Cafe Showroom
Christian iconography, Japanese manga and Taiwanese cosplay are among the cultural elements Hung Tung-lu (洪東祿) riffs off of in What Do We See? (我們看見什麼?), an exhibition of sculpture and prints created to depict an imagined future. All the human-like subjects shown in this series possess the double function of warrior and savior, suggesting that human security is bound up with its own destruction.
■ 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
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 7pm. Until June 30
Photo Courtesy of IT Park
Tina Keng Gallery’s Neihu location will hold a solo show of work by Chinese artist Guan Liang (關良). Guan’s color ink paintings depict figures from Chinese opera in a style that harks back to the wood-block prints and patterned lines of early 20th-century Japanese art. The exhibit will also feature a number of oil paintings from the last 30 years of his career.
■ Tina Keng Gallery (耿畫廊), 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號), tel: (02) 2659-0798. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 7pm
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3pm. Until June 24
In an era of the increasingly blurred boundaries between technology and art, interdisciplinary collaboration has become a sign of the times. At least that’s what the curators of We Are the Future (藝術超未來) want us to believe. The group show examines this theme through 18 works by teamLab, a Japanese collective of artists, programmers, engineers, mathematicians, architects and CG animators, to name a few. Are digital graphics the artistic wave of the future? Who knows, but if you are a geek, this is definitely a show you won’t want to miss.
■ National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung (國立台灣美術館), 2, Wucyuan W Rd Sec 1, Greater Taichung (台中市五權西路一段2號), tel: (04) 2372-3552. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm
■ Until July 29
Another high-tech show currently on view is Procedural Architecture — Resolution in the Age of Meta—Digital (衍序建築展—後設數位時代的新維度), which brings together close to 40 artists working in the relatively new field of digital architectural design. Using a teahouse as their primary theme, three teams were established to design and fabricate three of these traditional leisure spaces. “Through examples of digitally designed artifacts, visitors shall be able to sense what is really happening in and what is fundamentally changing the world of architectural design,” states the museum’s press release.
■ MOCA Studio, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei), 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號), tel: (02) 2552-3720. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Admission for Procedural Architecture is free. General admission: NT$50
■ Until June 30
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby