Tsai Shih-hung (蔡士弘) treats his canvas like a computer screen, copying and pasting avatars to populate a tech-smart and slightly menacing world. The results are on show at Magic Hour (加減乘除), a group exhibition of five pop artists. Jang Tarng-kuh (張堂庫), whose oeuvre shows a predilection for cats, is returning to the gallery with more puffy house pets brushed onto the canvas to seem more realistic than photographs. Zeng Ching-shi (曾慶熙) brings ape-men whose faces are foreign but relatable.
■ Metaphysical Art Gallery (形而上畫廊), 7F, 219, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段219號7樓), tel: (02) 2711-0055. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6:30pm
■ Until July 7
Photo courtesy of Wang Pei-shuan
Taiwan’s largest group of military dependents’ villages is on the way to extinction. In February 2009, Lulu Shur-tzy Hou (侯淑姿) photographed residents in three Zuoying District villages, two of which are now gone. Thirty-two of her photos are displayed at Here Is Where We Meet (我們在此相遇—2013侯淑姿個展). In a departure from previous works, Hou includes words from her photographed subjects in each image, as a gentle criticism of legislature’s so-called rebuilding policies that are aimed instead at demolition.
■ Main Trend Gallery (大趨勢畫廊), 209-1, Chengder Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (臺北市大同區承德路三段209-1號), tel: (02) 2587-3412. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until July 6
Photo courtesy of Main Trend Gallery
Aihua Hsia (夏愛華) uses traditional Japanese lacquer to make fantastical forest creatures in A Convalescence Realm — Solo Exhibition of Aihua Hsia (癒之境:夏愛華個展), her first solo show. The sculptures are based on real animals in Japan, where Hsia recuperated after a wearying artist-in-residency in New York. In the gallery notes, Hsia says she forgot the trials of New York after wandering into an ancient Japanese forest full of rare animals, like a bright-orange frog the size of her hand. “I hope to give contemporary society a healing space, too,” she writes.
■ MOT/Arts, 3F, 22, Fuxing S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市復興南路一段22號3樓), tel: (02) 2751-8088. Open daily from 11:30am to 8pm
■ Until July 6
Late Catalan painter Joan Miro is known for works that reject every school of painting that he encountered, including Surrealism, a category in which he’s often classed. Instead, Miro uses his own idiosyncratic color palette and visual terms — loaded symbols like woman, bird and star — to escape what he saw as the cultural repression in Barcelona under Francisco Franco’s regime. Over 85 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and lithographs completed between 1960 and 1980 are on show in Taiwan for the first time at Joan Miro: Women, Birds, Stars. During these final two decades of Miro’s career, women, birds and stars had become the major motifs of his artistic expression.
■ 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 Mondays to Sundays from 9am to 6pm. General admission: NT$250
■ Until Sept. 25
Wang Pei-hsuan (王珮瑄) is showing her paintings of strays in Pieces of Spaces: Solo Exhibition of Pei Hsuan Wang (王珮瑄創作個展). A portion of sales profits will go to Taiwan Animal S.O.S., a Taipei-based rescue group that supplied some of the live models.
■ Wenshui Arts and Cultural Center (文水藝文中心), 7F, 11, Nanjing E Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (北市中山區南京東路二段11號7F), tel: (02) 2563-4568 . Open Tuesdays to Fridays from 11am to 6pm
■ Until June 28
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
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
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