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
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
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