Sacred Sojourn (藏地轉行) is an exhibition of three high-resolution videos that Jawshing Arthur Liou (劉肇興) created after his daughter’s death. In mourning, Liou embarked on a 2,300km expedition from Lhasa to the Tibetan Plateau and on to Mount Everest and Mount Kailash. The works that have come out of this trip are unique mountain landscapes, presented with a respect for nature as a space of spiritual sanctuary. Zumulanma is a time-lapse sequence of deep-blue skies and distant snowcaps of Mount Everest, which are beautiful to behold yet oxygen-poor and merciless to most living creatures. Saga Dawa is a hypnotic soft-focus view of tourists and pilgrims partaking in a Tibetan Buddhist festival, surrounded by uniformed police who consider large gatherings tinder for rebellion. Kora, named after a type of Tibetan meditation that is done while walking, documents his own four-day walk around Mount Kailash in a bid to find peace. Born in 1968, Liou is currently a professor of digital art at Indiana University in Bloomington.
■ Taipei Fine Arts Museum (臺北市立美術館), 181, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市中山北路三段181號), tel: (02) 2595-7656. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm and until 8:30pm on Saturdays. Admission: NT$30
■ Opens tomorrow. Until July 20
Photo Courtesy of Adi Panuntun
We Art Together (當偶們同在藝起) brings together ceramics, paper puppets, wood engravings, stop-motion animation and other artworks by 636 students. Each year, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei sends artists to Cheng Yuan Senior High School (成淵高中), Jan Cheng Junior High School (建成國中) and Rixin Elementary School (日新國小) to teach six to eight-week courses in specialized media, from which this exhibition is a result.
■ 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 June 29
Photo Courtesy of TFAM
Metal Creation (鍊金術) is a group exhibition that chronicles the development of blacksmithing over the past 20 years in Taiwan. It offers live demonstrations and features 146 objects: daily items and tools, accessories and art pieces by top blacksmiths and apprentices in the trade.
■ National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute, 573 Zhongzheng Rd, Caotun Township, Nantou County (南投縣草屯鎮中正路573號), tel: (49) 233-4141. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm
■ Until Oct. 12
The Art of Chu Teh-chun (朱德群藝術展) is a retrospective exhibition honoring a leading abstract painter who passed away this March in Paris. Chu Teh-chun was born in 1920 in Suzhou, China, and fled to Taiwan during the Chinese Civil War. In 1955, he moved to Paris and began to depart from his earlier figurative works, experimenting with abstract pieces that combined Chinese calligraphy with light washes of oil paint. In 1997, Chu was elected to the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris as the first Asian-born member in its history. Tina Keng Gallery (耿畫廊) brings together 40 of Chu’s representative pieces dating from the 1950s to the 21st century.
■ 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 June 1
At Wonder of Fantasy: 2014 International Techno Art Exhibition (奇幻視界:2014國際科技藝術展), artists from around the globe use cutting-edge projection techniques and image formats to create 16 digital spectacles. This year’s program features workshops, forums and lectures by the world’s leading thinkers in new media theory, including Eleanor Gates-Stuart from Australia and Machiko Kusahara from Japan’s Waseda University. For more information, visit fantasy.ntmofa.gov.tw
■ 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 August 31
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
A sultry sea mist blankets New Taipei City as I pedal from Tamsui District (淡水) up the coast. This might not be ideal beach weather but it’s fine weather for riding –– the cloud cover sheltering arms and legs from the scourge of the subtropical sun. The dedicated bikeway that connects downtown Taipei with the west coast of New Taipei City ends just past Fisherman’s Wharf (漁人碼頭) so I’m not the only cyclist jostling for space among the SUVs and scooters on National Highway No. 2. Many Lycra-clad enthusiasts are racing north on stealthy Giants and Meridas, rounding “the crown coast”
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