Residents of the biennial Austronesian International Arts Award (南島國際美術獎) are showing freshly completed works inspired by Austronesian cultures or the landscape of Taitung County at the Taitung Art Museum (臺東美術館). In the first tier of this juried government-sponsored contest, artists were chosen for a fully-funded 30-day residency in Taitung County during which they completed a themed work. In the second tier, works were chosen for a NT$300,000 top prize and two awards of NT$100,000 each.
■ Taitung Art Museum, 350 Jhejiang Rd, Taitung County (台東縣台東市浙江路 350 號 ), tel: (08) 933-0252. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm
■ Opening reception tomorrow at 2pm. Until Aug. 31
Photo courtesy of Michael Ku Gallery
A Database of Living Bodies: The Production of Image Variations with Color Ink (活體資料庫:變異形象的墨彩製造) is an inventory of beasts delicately rendered in ink or gouache, a thick paint that builds up easily into layers and lends a sculptural feel. Eight contemporary Taiwanese artists created zoo animals with office-worker hindquarters, baby chicks with tentacles and other oddball assemblies of familiar animal parts.
■ Aki Gallery (也趣藝廊), 141 Minzu W Rd, Taipei City (台北市民族西路141號), tel: (02) 2599-1171. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 6:30pm
■ Until July 27
Photo courtesy of Aki Gallery
The Rural, the Scar, the Southwestern Soul: Works of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute (鄉土‧傷痕‧西南魂─四川美院作品展 ) is a group exhibition that surveys Scar Art (傷痕美術), a chapter of Chinese art history dealing with the Cultural Revolution. Beginning at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute (四川美院) in the 1970s, painters began to shift from idealistic portrayals of heroes to realist depictions of rural figures, minorities and memories of the Cultural Revolution.
■ National Museum of History (國立歷史博物館), 49 Nanhai Rd, Taipei City (台北市南海路49號), tel: (02) 2361-0270. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. General admission: NT$30
■ Until Aug. 24
Landscape of Man (人的風景) is a two-part exhibition offering a look at modern China through art. One gallery is covered with scripts, clips, posters and sound samples that survey Lou Ye’s (婁燁) oeuvre, which is typical of post-1990s “sixth generation” cinema in treating people of modern urban China. Meanwhile, Chinese contemporary artists Song Kun (宋琨), Wei Jia (韋嘉) and Qi Zing (齊星) show paintings of lovers, friends and single human figures caught in private and unguarded moments.
■ Michael Ku Gallery (谷公館), 4F-2, 21, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段21號4樓之2), tel: (02) 2577-5601. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until Aug. 17
There Has Been (此曾在) features two Taiwanese artists who each recreate a long-gone experience on film. Su Hu-hsien (蘇育賢) presents Chair (椅子), a gleeful 20-minute paean to a standard-issue wooden chair that in his childhood doubled as a time machine. Against a pale blue wall, Chu Yin-hua (朱盈樺) coordinates blown-up sepia-toned family photographs to reflect stories between moments and persons within them.
■ Fotoaura Institute of Photography (海馬迴光畫館), 2F, 83 Chenggong Rd, Greater Tainan (台南市成功路83號2樓), tel: (06) 222-3495. Open Wednesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 8pm, closed Mondays and Tuesdays
■ Until July 27
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