The Red thread –Dream of 49 days is a solo exhibition by South Korean installation artist Hyewon Park. Park drapes red string over black umbrellas to serve as a metaphor for life and death. Specifically it examines the folk belief that the soul wanders the world for 49 days before moving on to its next incarnation. Each of the 49 umbrellas contain a book meant to serve as a kind of ghostly diary, divulging how the ties that “entangle” people in life — between humans and objects, animals and dreams — are gradually cut as the new life approaches. The idea of the red string plays off a number of cultural symbols — in the Asia, red string binds couples together — dating back to antiquity.
■ Barry Room, Taipei Artist Village (台北國際藝術村百里廳), 7 Beiping E Rd, Taipei City (台北市北平東路7號), tel: (02) 3393-7377. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 9pm
■ Until April 14
Photo courtesy of TAV
Seeing Through Shadows brings together the work of three Japanese photographers: Araki Nobuyoshi, Moriyama Daido and Suda Issei. The exhibition serves to illustrate how photographic art repositioned itself and faced new challenges in Japan from the end of World War II to the 1970s. These artists made a definitive break with the pre-war photographic tradition, which mainly sought to mimic the aesthetic language of painting. In contrast, the three photographers on display use photography to express their response to dramatic social change. As a result, they and others gradually developed what American photography critic John Szarkowski called “Neo-Japanese photography,” which focused more on the individual style of “snapshots.”
■ Gallery 100 (百藝畫廊), 6, Ln 30, Changan E Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市長安東路一段30巷6號), tel: (02) 2536-2120. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until April 21
Photo courtesy of Gallery 100
Chinese artist Zhu Chunlin’s (朱春林) solo exhibition, Quietness and Peace (靜謐之在), reveals a realist painter of growing power and sophistication. His portraits and figurative works of women and children suggest in pastoral scenes and mannerist rooms suggest a life of leisure. But the sad expressions on their face reveal that something isn’t right in these scenes of apparent domestic bliss.
■ Elsa Art Gallery (雲清藝術中心), 3F, 1-1 Tianmu E Rd, Taipei City (台北市天母東路1-1號3樓), tel: (02) 2876-0386 Open Wednesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 7pm
■ Until April 21
Distilling the Soul’s Fragrance : Traditional Chinese Incense Culture (靈臺湛空明 -傳統香文化展) is an exhibit that provides a whirlwind tour of the uses of incense holders and the fragrant sticks themselves over the past thousand years. Whether as a status symbol of class or used in religious ceremonies as a means to achieving immortality, or as a sign of literary refinement, to its common use in folk culture, incense has always been an important part of Chinese culture.
■ National Museum of History (國立歷史博物館), 49 Nanhai Rd, Taipei City (台北市南海路49號), tel: (02) 2361-0270. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. General admission: NT$30
■ Until May 5
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 a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not