Three new artists cross paths in First Shot — Taiwan Potential Photographers Group Exhibition (新.影 台灣潛力新銳攝影聯展) at the Taiwan International Visual Arts Center (TIVAC). Ta-ching Liu (劉大慶) is here with Corn (玉米) — dreamlike stills of bugs crawling on corn — while his contemporary Wade Chang (張維智) has populous panoramas of modern life in Era of Uncertainty (搖晃年代). Yu-chi Li (李毓琪) is showing Goodbye, God of Land (再見, 地基主), her compilation of black-and-white negatives featuring pie-faced twins standing by old architecture, as a kind of requiem to the casualties of urban renewal. Another exhibition at TIVAC, Landscapes of My Memory (記憶中的風景), is a photo catalog of one man’s budget trips around the world. Technique is what sets this showcase apart from the average scrapbook. Kao Chih-chuan (高志尊) uses time-consuming yesteryear processes like cyanotype, albumen printing and gum bichromate to strike painterly tones hard to find in the digital print. On show are landscapes and portraits, such as a set on teenaged cosplayers — poignant works-in-progress who put on a sophisticated face for the camera.
■ Taiwan International Visual Arts Center (TIVAC — 台灣國際視覺藝術中心), 16, Alley 52, Ln 12, 16 Bade Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市松山區八德路三段12巷52弄16號), tel: (02) 2577-1781. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11:30am to 7pm
■ Until Sunday
Photo courtesy of MOCA, Taipei
There is a palatable, almost pop quality to the 11th Taishin Arts Awards Exhibition, a collection of highlights from 15 visual and performance works that premiered in Taiwan last year. Creative Society’s Playing the Violin (拉提琴) is a mainstream black comedy about the Taiwanese Everyman, and Chen Chin-pao’s (陳敬寶) Circumgyration: A Quartet (迴返計劃:四部曲) forces the eye to retrieve collective memories of the primary-school experience. Also on show are a homoerotic ballet by Horse Dance Theatre, an original composition by the National Symphony Orchestra and Huang Yi’s (黃翊) physical duet between himself and an industrial robot.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號), tel: (02) 2552-3721. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm
■ Until June 23
Photo courtesy of Jason Mak
Treasure Hill is showing Cycles of Rainbows (彩虹是圓的), a large-scale art installation that tells a story. Pieces that serve as storyboards are built around a centerpiece — the so-called bicycle of rainbows, which visitors are asked to ride as part of the gallery experience. This kinetic element is a signature of creator Wandering Cloud (行雲朵朵), a three-person art group that tries to pique active participation from viewers with animation art.
■ Treasure Hill Artist Village, Cross Gallery (寶藏巖國際藝術村十字藝廊), 49, Ln 230, Dingzhou Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市汀州路三段230巷49號), tel: (02) 2364-5313. Open Tuesday to Sundays from 3pm to 6pm
■ Until May 12
Photo Courtesy of TIVAC
Collectors can meet artists at Art Revolution Taipei (台北新藝術博覽), an art fair that includes paintings, prints and other contemporary art pieces. New to the 2013 edition is a thematic stress on “transmutation” (蛻變): Participants must show at least one work in a medium or subject outside their repertoire, and 20 percent of the floor space is marked off for avant-garde and academic art. Returning events include a celebrity charity benefit and a juried painting competition, which has received 2,462 submissions from 50 countries.
■ Art Revolution Taipei, Taipei World Trade Center Hall 3 (台北世貿三館), 6 Songshou Rd, Taipei City (松壽路六號), tel: (02) 7743-7788. Open from noon to 8pm. Admission: NT$100
■ Today, tomorrow, Sunday and Monday
Jason Mak’s Chinese Calligraphy Exhibition features 40 works inspired by Taiwan’s cities and counties — from Yunlin to Kinmen. The works avoid simple traditional scripts, applying modern approaches and variations to the ancient art of calligraphy. Mak’s calligraphy exhibition is the first in southern Taiwan to spotlight an expatriate. Hailing from Alberta, Canada, Mak has studied Chinese calligraphy in Taiwan for over a decade under master Shi Wang-chen (石忘塵).
■ Pingtung City Hall (屏東市公所), 2F, 61 Taitang St, Pingtung City (屏東市台糖街61號), tel: (08) 755-7688. Open Mondays to Fridays from 9am to 5pm
■ Until June 18
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
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
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s