An Older Sister’s Words, A Younger Sister’s Sketches (姊姊的話 妹妹的畫) is a solo show coordinated by Annie Yang for her sister, who suffers from multiple personality disorder. Born in Changhua County, the Yang sisters were close as children and both artistically gifted. After the emergence of her mental illness, the younger sister struggled with social interaction and took to drawing one picture every day: colorful, unusual depictions of people matched to short phrases that comment on her surroundings.
■ Cafe-Changee (延吉小屋), 55, Ln 106, Bade Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市八德路三段106巷55號), tel: (02) 2577-8248. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 8pm
■ Until March 30
Photo courtesy of Tina Keng Gallery
The Seven Beds (七張床) are simple graphics based on seven beds Wu Tung-lung (吳東龍) slept on in New York City. Wu left for Brooklyn last year to work at the International Studio and Curatorial Program, as part of the Ministry of Culture’s International Artist Residency Exchange Program. While overseas, Wu lived with friends and rented rooms, hopping from one sleeping arrangement to another. “There was a mattress that has already lost its springiness, rooms that were noisy and restless, old yellow sheets and moldy pillows, a couch with a broken leg, and an attic up on a layer sandwiched with wooden boards,” writes Wu in the gallery notes. Each work at the exhibition — a basic image with Wu’s distinctive color treatment and minimalism of expression — represents a different bed, as well a demographic of New York’s chaotic humanity that may have slept in it before.
■ Project Fulfill Art Space (就在藝術空間), 2, Alley 45, Ln 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷45弄2號), tel: (02) 2707-6942. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 6pm
■ Opening reception tomorrow at 4pm. Until April 27
Photo courtesy of Project Fulfill Art Space
The Art of George Chann (陳蔭羆藝術展) is a retrospective exhibition on a Chinese-American artist who became a fixture of modern art in California. Born in 1913 in Canton, China, George Chann (陳蔭羆) immigrated to the US as a child and made a name painting impressionist portraits of Asians, blacks and other American minorities. Chann’s current exhibition presents this early portraiture, as well as figurative landscapes and the abstract expressionist paintings of his later years. In the 1950s, Chann developed a characteristic style of abstract painting, in which Chinese calligraphic characters were pressed and scratched until they broke apart on the canvas and became indistinguishable.
■ Tina Keng Gallery (耿畫廊), 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號), tel: (02) 2659-0798. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 7pm
■ Until April 20
Cloacinae: Goddess of the Sewer (克蘿亞琴娜:下水道的守護女神) compiles recent work by French artist Serge Onnen including wallpaper, a light installation, animation and paintings. His centerpiece is the short film Cloacinae, named after the Roman goddess of the sewers. Animated by shadow puppets, the film is a trip underground via sewers, the negative space that makes modern standards of living possible. Onnen joins Robin Erik Ruizendaal, art director of Taiyuan Puppet Theatre Company, in a talk on the art of shadow puppetry this Sunday at 2:30pm.
■ MOCA Studio Underground (地下實驗), Zhongshan Metro Mall, near Exit R9 (捷運中山地下街,近R9出口), tel: (02) 2552-3721. Free admission
■ Until March 30
The Festival of the Callalily (竹子湖海芋季) is an annual floral art exhibition hosted by small farms that offer bouquets, live music and guided tours of the nearby Bamboo Lake (竹子湖).
■ Multiple venues at Yangmingshan National Park (陽明山國家公園) in Taipei City. For full list of locations and visiting hours, see www.callalily.com.tw
■ Until April 27
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and