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
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In the aftermath of the 2020 general elections the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was demoralized. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had crushed them in a second landslide in a row, with their presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) winning more votes than any in Taiwan’s history. The KMT did pick up three legislative seats, but the DPP retained an outright majority. To take responsibility for that catastrophic loss, as is customary, party chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) resigned. This would mark the end of an era of how the party operated and the beginning of a new effort at reform, first under