At Vertigo: Chaos and Dislocation in Contemporary Australian Art (迷魂場域), 10 Australian artists bring works about the stranger conditions of contemporary life. Using motion sensors, Kristin McIver builds an installation that greets passersby with urgent demands to “share” and “engage” online — a parody that attracts notice to a routine event. Cate Consandine’s Lash is a video without a narrative about the fetish of cosmetics and masks, featuring a man with feathers attached to his face. Curated by Claire Anna Watson, Vertigo is a touring exhibition organized by Asialink Arts in Australia. It is named after the Hitchcock film Vertigo, notable for using the in-camera dolly zoom effect to convey the protagonist’s fear of heights.
■ 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. Admission: Free
■ Opens tomorrow. Until June 8
Photo Courtesy of MOCA
Chen Shun-chu (陳順築) presents his memoirs in two ways at solo exhibition One Piece Room. Born in 1963 in Penghu County, Chen left as a teen to live in Taipei and pursued what became a successful career as a fine art photographer. Fengkuei Chair (風櫃椅), a two-part installation, is his careful configuration of a wooden cabinet, a rotating ceiling fan, a chair, a glass of water and other household items. Each is a symbol — the cabinet is home, the chair is himself and the objects are memories — and their arrangement depicts an inner emotional tension that comes with a nomadic career. At the exhibition Chen is also showing On the Road (迢迢路), 11 black-and-white images that prominently feature puddles on the road and desolate, unpeopled street scenes in Penghu, Taiwan and a handful of foreign countries. These road landscapes are left unprocessed and uncut, so that they are an unedited scrapbook of time spent between destinations.
■ Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (關渡美術館), 1 Xueyuan Rd, Taipei City (台北市學園路1號), tel: (02) 2896-1000 ext 2432. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 5pm
■ Opens today. Until July 6
Photo Courtesy of TFAM
The Youth Innovative Design Festival (青春設計節) at the Pier-2 Art Center in Greater Kaohsiung is an annual stage for Taiwanese students of audiovisual media, digital technology, visual design, games and installation art. This year, the program includes a film festival and forums by design professors and working designers. For more information, visit www.ydf.org.tw
■ Pier-2 Art Center (駁二藝術特區), 1 Dayong Rd, Greater Kaohsiung (高雄市大勇路1號), tel: (07) 228-8936. Open Tuesday to Sundays from 10am to 8pm, admission: NT$99
■ Until Sunday
Pioneer of Taiwan Ceramics (臺灣窯業達人) features Lin Ken-Cheng (林根成) — “Teacher Ah-cheng” (阿成師) — an octogenarian who was the face of Taiwanese ceramics at the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle. His solo exhibition is a roundup of iconic works including his sophisticated statues of Buddha and other gods, which were exported to about 40 countries throughout his career. Born in Tonghsiao (通霄), Miaoli in 1932, Lin is founder of Yingge’s Chuohong Studio (佐弘工藝社工作室) and the Taiwan Folk Art Ceramics Company.
■ Yingge Ceramics Museum (鶯歌陶瓷博物館), 200 Wenhua Rd, New Taipei City (新北市文化路200號), tel: (02) 8677-2727. Open Mondays to Fridays from 9:30am to 5pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 9:30am to 6pm, closed first Monday of the month. Admission: Free
■ Until June 8
Playground for Kids: Indigenous Contemporary Art of Taiwan (童年遊戲場: 臺灣原住民當代藝術展) is an interactive art show for children at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (高雄市立美術館). Eight artists from six Aboriginal tribes were invited to create pieces that teach children the Austronesian games and customs of their own childhoods. There’s a theater that screens animated films, as well as interactive pieces such as a kid-friendly loom for Atayal weaving and a “forest” populated with animal sculptures, where children can learn creative uses for the leaf of a pandanus tree.
■ Children’s Museum of Art Gallery at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, 80 Meishuguan Rd, Greater Kaohsiung (高雄市美術館路80號), tel: (07) 555-0331. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm. Admission: Free
■ Until May 25
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
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
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s