Rine Boyer, who hails from hipster-rich Bridgeport, Chicago, offers her take on hipsters at a solo exhibition in Taipei. On view at Bluerider Art’s Hipster Culture (文青文化) are funky acrylic portraits of young people that Boyer met at dive bars, indie concerts and other retreats for Chicago’s alternative crowd. From afar, you see only the hipster in hipster gear. Up close, you notice tiny icons on the portrait — such as the pink octopi on Todd — that may be badges of other cultural identities. Through works that reward a shift in perception with new information, Boyer encourages viewers to test new ways of seeing the hipster phenomenon.
■ Bluerider Art, 9F, 25-1, Renai Rd Sec 4, Taipei (北市仁愛路四段25-1號9樓), tel: (02) 2752-2238, open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 6pm
■ Opening reception tomorrow at 3pm. Until Feb. 9
Photo Courtesy of the Taipei4A
At Stop Right Beside God (停在神旁邊), Pingtung native Huang Yen-Ying (黃彥穎) is showing video, photo, paintings and installations that depict slices of Taiwan’s religious and spiritual landscape. His latest video project, The Flow of Energy (穴道圖), is inspired by his trips to a traditional Chinese medicine clinic, where he encountered blind masseurs who read pressure points like a horoscope. Huang’s Amen (阿們) is a series about the ubiquitous donation boxes that passersby fill up with receipts and cash — even though they can’t confirm the final destination.
■ VT Artsalon (非常廟藝文空間), B1, 17, Ln 56, Xinsheng N Rd Sec 3, Taipei (台北市新生北路三段56巷17號B1), tel: (02) 2597-2525. Open Tuesdays through Fridays from 11:30pm to 7pm and Saturdays from 1:30 to 9pm
Photo Courtesy of Bluerider Art
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Jan. 18
The Children’s Rights Poster Exhibition (童理心—兒童人權海報特展) features 29 winners and runner-ups in the student division of the 4A Creative Awards (4A創意獎), a national ad design contest. This year, graduate and undergraduate students were asked to create public service ads promoting one of the interior ministry’s Rights of the Child (兒童權利公約), for instance the right to personal safety and freedom from economic exploitation. The top prize went to Shen Feng-chuan (沈楓荃) of Ming Chuan University for Listen to Mom and Dad: a pair of cartoon ads that show parents leading children to suicide.
■ National Taiwan Museum (臺灣博物館), 2 Xiangyang Rd, Taipei (臺北市襄陽路2號), tel: (02) 2382-2566, open Tuesdays through Sundays from 9:30am to 5 pm
■ Until Jan. 14
The Taipei Arts Awards (台北美術獎) is a juried competition for rising visual artists in Taiwan. Chosen from 245 entrants, this year’s 12 finalists include Yuda Ho (何昱達), whose virtual saleswomen in 24 Hrs Betelnut Shop invite interaction, and Chen Ting-chun (陳亭君) of Their Rooms, Their Dreams: playful oil paintings of furnishings that tell tales about their owners. Works by finalists go on display tomorrow.
■ Taipei Fine Arts Museum (台北市立美術館), 181, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 3, Taipei (台北市中山北路三段181號), tel: (02) 2595-7656. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm and until 8:30pm on Saturdays
■ Opens tomorrow. Until March 16
Pure Taiwan (玉質台灣) is a group show of jade art at the Hualien County Stone Sculptural Museum, Taiwan’s only museum dedicated to stone sculptures. Hualien is home to diverse stone deposits, including prized jades like blue jade and the crystal-like chalcedony. The show features a “dining room” and a “study” that are adorned with a black-jade chandelier and other ornate jade pieces curated by Chen Jun-liang (陳俊良) in partnership with local artisans. A third room, titled “Decorated Treasures,” presents metalwork devised around jade.
■ Hualien County Stone Sculptural Museum (花蓮石雕博物館), 6 Wenfu Rd, Hualien City (花蓮市文復路6號), tel: (03) 822-7121 ext. 245, open daily from 9am to 5pm, admission: NT$20
■ Until Feb. 16
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
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
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located