Days in Jiufen 1963 - 2006 (走過九份) is a visual record of Jiufen (九份) by Wong Ting-hua (翁庭華), a documentary photographer celebrated for his long-term work in Keelung City. Jiufen is a mountain town in New Taipei City that flourished and reached its prime during the gold rush of the early 20th century. By 1963, when Wu visited for the first time, all mining activities had ceased and Jiufen was a quiet town with a tiny population and a unique misty atmosphere. Wong’s solo exhibition presents 70 silver halide photographs, taken between 1963 and 2006, that tell the story of Jiufen as it progresses from a sleepy mountain hamlet to a popular tourist site.
■ 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 June 8
Photo courtesy of Eslite Gallery
K-P.O.P. — Korean Contemporary Art (韓國當代藝術展) features 19 South Korean artists whose works provide a survey of the country’s pop culture and art. Themes treated include gender values, religion and how online role-playing games are being used as a form of escape. The program opens tomorrow at 10am with a symposium featuring art directors on the state of contemporary art and museums in South Korea. Curator Yoon Jin Sup leads an artist’s talk on Sunday. For more information or to register, visit www.mocataipei.org.tw.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei), 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. General admission: NT$50
■ Opens tomorrow. Until June 15
Photo courtesy of NTMOFA
At solo show Sonnet 27 麻思), digital artist Jawshing Arthur Liou (劉肇興) presents a multi-channel video installation about marijuana and its effects on the brain. Liou embeds high-resolution microscope footage of live neurons into a narrative based in prehistoric times, taking viewers on a kind of mental journey that mimics the experience of consuming marijuana. This experience is euphoria, but it is also the act of forgetting, Liou writes in the gallery notes. At Indiana University Bloomington, Liou worked with researcher Alex Straiker of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, whose work suggested that marijuana and cannabis-like chemicals can help the brain forget trauma. According to Straiker’s recent research with mice, the brain begins producing marijuana-like chemicals at birth, and mice that lack receptors for activation are unable to forget painful experiences.
■ Chi-Wen Gallery (其玟畫廊), 3F, 19, Ln 252, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段252巷19號3樓), tel: (02) 8771-3372. Open Tuesdays through Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until May 24
Eslite Gallery presents Chinese artist Lu Liang’s (陸亮) first solo show in Taiwan: realist oil paintings that are about life in China, yet are mostly devoid of people. Instead, Lu adorns landscapes and room interiors with key props — traces of human activity that hint at an unspoken story. Born in Shanghai in 1975, Lu studied mural painting at the Central Academy of Art in Beijing and works with issues such as human survival in a fast-paced society and the irreversible consequences of industrial development on culture and the environment.
■ Eslite Gallery (誠品畫廊), 5F, 11 Songgao Rd, Taipei City (台北市松高路11號5樓), tel: (02) 8789-3388. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm, closed on Mondays
■ Until May 11
At solo exhibition Roadside Theater (路邊劇場), Jang Tarng Kuh (張堂庫) presents dramatic pictures of wildlife found in his courtyard. After residing on Yangmingshan for 20 years, Jang recently relocated to Yilan County, where he is a neighbor to the Taiwan Blue Magpie, the White-breasted Water Hen, the Bamboo Viper, the Collared Scops Owl and house cats. In his characteristic realist style, he captures stills of plants and animals engaging intimately with one another: bananas flirt with a bird, a cat and a flower sit together, gazing curiously at second cat. Jang gives a huge depth and range to the color green, which sometimes appears on plants as moist and watery, sometimes thick and greasy, and sometimes covered with a splendid film of steam.
■ Metaphysical Art Gallery (形而上畫廊), 7F, 219, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段219號7樓), tel: (02) 2711-0055. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6:30pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until May 18
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