With white walls and acrylic paintings of abstract nature scenes ranging from baby blue to deep blue, Yosifu Contemporary Taiwan Aboriginal Art on Jinshan South Road is an oasis in the middle of the urban sprawl that is Taipei.
Dressed in khaki shorts and flip-flops, artist and gallery director Yosifu, who is from the Amis tribe in Hualien, says his gallery is an open and inclusive space that defies perceptions of Aboriginal people.
“I wanted to set up a different kind of gallery where people can walk in with slippers and take pictures,” says Yosifu.
photo: Dana Ter
He adds that “people normally think that an Aboriginal art studio needs to look very ‘traditional’ and include lots of wood and stone carvings.”
Yosifu is one of the few Aboriginal artists from Taiwan to achieve international acclaim, having participated in art festivals all over Europe and Asia. He identifies not only with being Amis, but as a “global person” — the result of traveling to over 40 countries and dividing his time between Scotland’s Edinburgh and Taipei for the past 15 years. As such, his artwork is a means of communicating Aboriginal culture while simultaneously raising awareness of global issues like environmental destruction.
ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS
photo: Dana Ter
This dual message is evident in many of his paintings. The ocean is Yosifu’s muse — his piece Blue Diamond (藍色鑽石), for instance, is inspired by the seven seas.
Yosifu says he is constantly questioned by reporters who make remarks such as, “I don’t see any elements of Aboriginal culture in your abstract art.”
Unfettered, he sees these questions as educative opportunities to explain the meaning behind his artwork.
photo: Dana Ter
“The message is not just Aboriginal, Aboriginal, Aboriginal,” said Yosifu.
“Amis culture is closely connected with nature, but pollution and nuclear waste affects everyone and destroys everyone’s environment,” he adds.
Yosifu’s paintings depict his impressions of the rice paddies in his native Hualien to the corals in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Some paintings such as The Key, Open the Mind and Open the Eyes employ earthy tones but are more abstract in the sense that they encourage viewers to be open-minded.
Yosifu acknowledges the importance of preserving Aboriginal culture through his artwork, but he believes that linking it to environmental concerns makes it more relatable to viewers.
“It is about speaking to people in a universal voice,” he says.
OUTSPOKEN VOICE
Yosifu says that his transition to abstract art was befuddling to some because prior to this year, his paintings revolved around colorful portraits of Aboriginal people.
In 2010, his portrait of his friend Ado with her finger over her mouth was chosen to be on the poster representing Ban-Do @Formosa at the Candid Arts Trust in London. Entitled Can’t Speak (說不出), the piece is a critique of the government’s law prohibiting the use of Hakka, Hoklo and Aboriginal languages in Taiwan from the 1950s to the 1990s.
Unlike Hakka or Hoklo, which can mostly be written in the form of Chinese characters, Aboriginal languages are passed down orally.
“If you cut the language, you are cutting our cultural continuation,” Yosifu said.
Yosifu understands the importance of language preservation. Once a professional singer, he regularly holds dance and music performances at his gallery. A few weeks ago, he hosted a Maori festival in which he also sang.
“I like to make my gallery an energetic, open area for people to share their stories,” Yosifu says.
He adds that his artwork “ignites conversations and connects different people.”
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby