China’s Hua Qing (華慶) makes the Chinese Zodiac seem like the animals next door. In The Twelve Faces of Humankind (人的十二個面貌), a solo show of oil paintings and wood prints, Hua roughly strips the twelve creatures of their mythology. The dragon is no longer a dragon, but a dinosaur that once roamed the earth, and the lyrical rooster is replaced with a wrinkled turkey. Each animal is fitted with a pair of human eyes, so that the horse seems to wink, while the rat, carrying its offspring, looks out with a gaze that’s faintly accusatory.
■ Asia Art Center II (亞洲藝術中心二館), 93, Lequn 2nd Road, Taipei City (台北市樂群二路93號), tel: (02) 8502-7939. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6:30pm
■ Until Sunday
Photo courtesy of Asia Art Center
Huang Hai-hsin (黃海欣) isn’t sure there is a happy future ahead of Taiwan. In solo exhibition A Better Future: “Home, Sweet Home” (“甜蜜家庭” 黃海欣個展) , she brings some 50 paintings of contemporary life that are as humorous as they are horrifying. In one, first-aid instructions are displayed in a restaurant; in another, a girl plays violin for her father, who reads a newspaper in front of a TV. Huang (b. 1984) received a Taishin Arts Award last year and the Taipei Arts Award in 2011.
■ Project Fulfill Art Space (就在藝術空間), 2, Alley 45, Ln 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷45弄2號), tel: (02) 2707-6942. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 7pm
■ Until June 30
Photo courtesy of Aki Gallery
The Edge of Darkness — Solo Exhibition by Lo Chan-Peng (黑的邊緣 — 羅展鵬個展) offers a simulation of going to the movies. Pop artist Lo Chan-peng (羅展鵬), who hails from the so-called Strawberry Generation, is showing his latest portraits of ashen young people who seem to cry under the gaze. Just as the audience in a movie theater can become wholly immersed in the big screen, Lo’s subjects compel viewers to look harder and to forget all about themselves in the darkness.
■ Aki Gallery (也趣藝廊), 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 June 30
Shinji Ohmaki uses Taiwan’s endangered flowers in Tree of Life-form/Substance, a solo show in Taipei. In an extension of his Echoes-Infinity series, Ohmaki paints Taiwan’s rarest flowers on local textiles, creating a giant carpet that blooms with kaleidoscopic spots. Viewers are invited to tread on the paint blossoms, which bleed into the carpet and gradually blur in a playful metaphor for the contact between civilization and nature. In another room, Ohmaki uses real oak branches, powder paintings and images of trees to explore themes from Adam and Eve’s Fall in the Garden of Eden.
■ Mind Set Art Center (安卓藝術), 16-1, Xinsheng S Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市新生南路三段16-1號), tel: (02) 2365-6008. Tuesdays to Sunday 2pm to 6pm
■ Opening reception on Sunday from 3:30pm to 6:30pm. Until August 18
Local eighth graders bring art projects to the MOCA Studio Underground in Howdy? Goody-goody! Flash mob! (怪怪?乖乖! 快閃!!). This exhibit gets its exclamation-pointed title from an actual flash mob routine, one of four projects that students produced with a little help from artist Ye Yu-jun (葉育君). You won’t get flash mobbed at the gallery, but all of the students’ inanimate works are there: colorful cardboard box masks, restyled school uniforms and images of Jan Cheng Junior High School (建成國中) that are reconstructed into fun and surreal postcards. Ye, a Paris-trained artist who works mainly with video installation, sound and performance art, was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (台北當代藝術館)to teach public-school students and help them develop art projects over eight weeks.
■ MOCA Studio Underground (地下實驗), Zhongshan Metro Mall B30/32/34, near Exit R9 (捷運中山地下街,近R9出口), tel: (02) 2552-3721. Free admission
■ Until July 21
In the mainstream view, the Philippines should be worried that a conflict over Taiwan between the superpowers will drag in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr observed in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last year, “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.” Such sentiments are widespread. Few seem to have imagined the opposite: that a gray zone incursion of People’s Republic of China (PRC) ships into the Philippines’ waters could trigger a conflict that drags in Taiwan. Fewer
March 18 to March 24 Yasushi Noro knew that it was not the right time to scale Hehuan Mountain (合歡). It was March 1913 and the weather was still bitingly cold at high altitudes. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait, either. Launched in 1910, the Japanese colonial government’s “five year plan to govern the savages” was going well. After numerous bloody battles, they had subdued almost all of the indigenous peoples in northeastern Taiwan, save for the Truku who held strong to their territory around the Liwu River (立霧溪) and Mugua River (木瓜溪) basins in today’s Hualien County (花蓮). The Japanese
Pei-Ru Ko (柯沛如) says her Taipei upbringing was a little different from her peers. “We lived near the National Palace Museum [north of Taipei] and our neighbors had rice paddies. They were growing food right next to us. There was a mountain and a river so people would say, ‘you live in the mountains,’ and my friends wouldn’t want to come and visit.” While her school friends remained a bus ride away, Ko’s semi-rural upbringing schooled her in other things, including where food comes from. “Most people living in Taipei wouldn’t have a neighbor that was growing food,” she says. “So
Whether you’re interested in the history of ceramics, the production process itself, creating your own pottery, shopping for ceramic vessels, or simply admiring beautiful handmade items, the Zhunan Snake Kiln (竹南蛇窯) in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, is definitely worth a visit. For centuries, kiln products were an integral part of daily life in Taiwan: bricks for walls, tiles for roofs, pottery for the kitchen, jugs for fermenting alcoholic drinks, as well as decorative elements on temples, all came from kilns, and Miaoli was a major hub for the production of these items. The Zhunan Snake Kiln has a large area dedicated