The Japanese makers of Line present Here We Are in Taipei — Line Friends (Line 玩偶展覽), their first attempt at turning the mobile messaging app into a full-scale exhibition. The formidable offerings include a gallery dedicated to Line-themed art, and another to original sticker drafts and other sketches apparently taken off the walls of the Line Corporation headquarters. Meet life-sized models of Brown the bear and Cony the bunny, then browse at a pop-up shop stocked with imported Line products. A special little app promises to unveil a new Line friend and other surprises.
■ 7F, National Taiwan Education Science Center (國立臺灣科學教育館7樓), 189 Shishang Rd, Taipei (臺北市士商路189號), open Mondays to Fridays from 9am to 5pm, Jan. 25 to Feb. 10 from 9am to 6pm, tel: (02) 8643-3955, general admission: NT$250
■ Opens tomorrow. Until April 27
Photo Courtesy of National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts
The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (國立臺灣美術館) is marking the Spring Festival with a concert on Feb. 1 and two concurrent exhibitions. Thundering Success for the Year of Galloping Horses — the 29th Annual R.O.C. New Year Print Exhibition (29屆版印年畫展) collects 84 best-of block prints themed on the horse. Now in its 29th year, the juried exhibition received 232 submissions from professional and hobbyist folk printmakers nationwide. A second show, The Pioneers of Taiwanese Artists, 1951-1960 (刺客列傳, 四年級生), showcases 20 Taiwanese artists who came of age professionally in the 1980s. Breakneck social changes during the decade, notably the lifting of martial law and the nationwide press ban, spurred on this generation of artists to challenge both traditional aesthetics and contemporary ideological trends.
■ National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (國立臺灣美術館), 2, Wuquan W Rd Sec 1, Greater Taichung (台中市西區五權西路一段2號) tel: (04) 2372-3552, open Tuesdays to Fridays from 9am to 5pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 9am to 6pm
■ Until March 25
Photo Courtesy of VT Art Salon
A New Age of Exploration: National Geographic at 125 (探索無限─國家地理125年經典影像大展) opens in Greater Kaohsiung today with archival photographs of key moments around the world. On display are Steve McCurry’s Afghan Girl (1984), views of the Titanic shipwreck and other iconic photojournalism from National Geographic’s 125-year history. This international show’s Taiwan edition includes a gallery titled Memories of Taiwan (台灣記憶), a collection of local images that date back to 1920.
■ B6 and B7 at Kaohsiung’s Pier 2 Arts Center (高雄駁二藝術特區), 1 Dayong Rd, Greater Kaohsiung (高雄市大勇路1號), tel: (07) 780-9900, open daily from 10am to 6pm, general admission: NT$399
■ Opens today. Until April 13
Lai Pei-yu (賴珮瑜), an artist and art theorist, has developed a style of using white dots to depict everyday scenes, reducing them to such ambiguous abstractions that a viewer must access and reconsider memory to complete the picture. At Path (路徑), her latest solo exhibition, she uses dot writing in video art to let audiences almost see logic behind big aggregations of data, such as citywide traffic flow or 95 television channels at 8:31pm.
■ VT Art Salon (非常廟藝文空間), B1, 17, Ln 56, Xinsheng 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 11:30am to 7pm, Saturdays from 1:30pm to 9pm, closed Sundays and Mondays
■ Opening reception tomorrow at 7pm. Until March 1
History Re-presented (再會歷史) features sculpture by iconic Chinese artist Cai Zhisong (蔡志松). His best-known series, Ode to Motherland (故國), is a look at the erosion of ancient traditions from present-day China. These sculptures are the last ancient Chinese standing: Some are naked with head bowed and fists clenched, while others are robed, deferent and resigned to the tide of time. Cai also brings to Taipei his recent series Clouds (浮雲) and Rose (玫瑰) — a collection of glorious, permanent, technically perfect blooms drained of color and warmth, each an open question about what ideal love should be.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA Taipei, 台北當代藝術館), 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號), tel: (02) 2552-3720, open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm, admission: NT$50
■ Opens tomorrow. Until April 6
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
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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