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
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless