Ever wanted to videochat with the Nigerian prince who wants you to move his offshore gold? This is the next best thing. The Letters (信) is a solo show featuring the fictional authors of spam that artist Yu Cheng-ta (余政達) chose from his inbox. His exhibition is a multi-channel video installation that shows actors reading and improvising on the letters. All actors were found through Facebook and match the reported physical descriptions of the writers: There’s a dying Kuwaiti widow, the son of a Libyan prime minister, an Asian woman, an Irish salesman and an African banker inviting you to join him in international crime. The actors work to make spam visible, so that viewers can confront racial stereotypes that global enterprises employ for their financial gain.
■ Chi-wen Gallery, 3F, 19, Ln 252, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段252巷19號3樓), tel: (02) 8771-3372. Open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until Dec. 14
Photo courtesy of National Palace Museum
The X-Man is a solo exhibition by Nick Veasey, a British artist who specializes in X-ray photography. Using industrial radiographic imaging equipment, Veasey captures below-the-surface views of a rose, a French cornet and other objects. One image, of a Boeing 777, was achieved by knitting together hundreds of scans. These photos expose delicate inner workings that are ordinarily invisible to the human eye, baring their man- or nature-made design.
■ Bluerider Art, 9F, 25-1, Renai Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (北市仁愛路四段25-1號9樓), tel: (02) 2752-2238, open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 6pm
■ Artist talk tomorrow at 3:30pm. Opens Sunday. Until Jan. 12
photo courtesy of Yi&C cONTEMPORARY aRT
Contiguous Zone (領海) is a group show of nine Japanese artists bringing newfangled curiosities of mainstream contemporary art. Miki Kubota transforms 2D tattoo illustrations into 3D sculptures, using a crafty combination of photography and printing; Takahiro Hirabayashi has invented an eerie portrait aesthetic that trades heavily on bruises and wounds. Other works on view include sculpture, block prints and acrylic paintings that — as the exhibition’s title suggests — sit on their genre’s border, with ambitions to reshape it with their techniques and visual vocabulary.
■ 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
■ Opening party tomorrow at 7:30pm. Until Dec. 1
Delve into the story of Mona Lisa’s creation, theft, recovery and influence at Leonardo-Mona Lisa-The Myths (蒙娜麗莎500年:達文西傳奇) in the National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院). The original isn’t there, though select da Vinci pieces including Virgin of the Rocks and Leda and the Swan provide context for the hyper-famous work.
■ Library Building, National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院圖書文獻大樓), 221 Zhishan Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市至善路二段221號), tel: (02) 2881-2021. Open daily from 9am to 5pm
■ Until Feb. 10
Memories of a Stray Dog (野犬記憶) is a solo exhibition featuring street photographer Daido Moriyama (b.1938). Moriyama has gained cult status in Japan for high-contrast, rough-particle images that he takes quickly and without using a viewfinder. He is the titular stray dog, and his work records the grimmer aspects of city life. Yi&C Contemporary Art (易雅居當代空間館) brings together Moriyama’s early series Provoke (挑釁, 1968), New York (1971), Tight (網襪, 1987) and Tiles (磁磚, 1987), as well as more recent prints, Rolling Stones and Hawaii Dog.
■ Yi&C Contemporary Art, 22, Ln 252, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段252巷22號), tel: (02) 2781-3131. Open Mondays to Fridays from 10am to 7pm and Saturdays and Sundays from 2pm to 6pm
■ Until Dec. 7
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
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
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist