The 40 murals on display at 3D Dark Art (DARK ART 夜光3D藝術展) appear 3D from a fixed point, so that viewers can walk in and, for example, have tea with Mona Lisa, launch a ball of pure energy at an enemy or insert themselves under a bell jar next to a lady vampire. The vampire’s eyes even change color — all pieces feature fluorescent paint or other materials that transform when subjected to black light.
■ Hall 4B at 1914 Huashan Cultural and Creative Park (1914文創園區), Bade Rd Sec 1, Taipei (台北市八德路一段1號), tel: (02) 8732-7976. Open Mondays to Fridays from 10am to 6pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 9am to 6pm. Regular admission: NT$280
■ Until March 16
Photo Courtesy of Taiwan Soca Association
The National Palace Museum is currently showing an exhibition that gives viewers a sense of how Han Chinese settlers viewed Taiwan’s Aboriginal peoples during the 18th and 19th centuries. After the Qing (清) court annexed Taiwan in the late 17th century, Han Chinese migrated across the Strait to claim land, encountering the region’s autochthonous people along the way and recording the experience in books, illustrations and other artifacts on display at In Their Footsteps. The exhibition includes rare documents of Aboriginal culture by western visitors such as Scotsman John Thomson, who in 1871 sailed into what is today Greater Kaohsiung and photographed his trip from Liouguei (六龜) to Tainan.
■ National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院圖書文獻大樓), 221 Zhishan Rd Sec 2, Taipei (台北市至善路二段221號), tel: (02) 2881-2021. Open daily from 9am to 5pm. General admission: NT$160
■ Until May 19
Photo Courtesy of Uraku Entertainment Inc.
At Japanese artist Ryuca’s solo show, If You Laugh (如果你笑的話), every oil painting is as cute as a bug, featuring a baby animal or an expressionless doe-eyed child wearing an animal costume. These are loveable ambassadors of kawaii, as well as a sweet release into helplessness against anguish-inducing modern realities. “Children have no defenses against the unreasonableness of society,” writes the artist in gallery notes.
■ Little MOCA (微當代文創), 17, Ln 17, Chengde Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (臺北市承德路一段41巷17號), tel: (02) 2558-1787 Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6pm
■ Until May 4
Surging Waves (澄海波瀾) is an art exhibition commemorating Chen Cheng-po (陳澄波), a Chiayi-born artist who was publicly executed by the government during the 228 Incident in 1947. Chen was trained in Tokyo and became a prime mover in Taiwan’s modern art scene. His oil painting Qing Liu (清流), which is currently on display in Tainan with other works and never-before-displayed personal items, represented the Republic of China at the 1932 Chicago World’s Fair.
■ Xinying Culture Center (新營文化中心), 23 Zhongzheng Rd Xinying District, Tainan City (臺南市新營區中正路23號), tel: (06) 6321047, open Wednesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm
■ Until March 30
The Taiwan Soka Association (台灣創價學會) is hosting a retrospective show of works by Huang Lei-sheng (黃磊生, 1928-2011), a Chinese watercolor artist famous for painting from nature. Huang traveled across China to scout out locations with exotic flowers, birds and grand mountain peaks. He was a member of the Lingnan School of Painting (嶺南畫派的繪畫藝術), a 20th-century movement that challenged traditional Chinese art by adopting foreign brushwork and aesthetics like Western romanticism and realism.
■ Hsiu-shui Art Center (秀水藝文中心), 61, 2F, Pingan Fifth St, Anxi Village, Xiushui Township, Changhua County (彰化縣秀水鄉安溪村平安五街61號2樓), tel: (04) 763-3643, open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5pm
■ Until March 15
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