Let’s Get Married! (我們結婚吧!) is an endearing show with a strong exhortatory message likely aimed at boosting Taiwan’s marriage rate. Through black-and-white family photographs, interviews and color images from a second “wedding photography” session, the exhibition tells the story of 38 married couples from Yunlin’s Douliou City (斗六) and of their lives in the 20th-century.
■ Futai Street Mansion (撫臺街洋樓), 26 Yanping S Rd, Taipei City (臺北市延平南路26號), tel: (02) 2314-8080 ext. 21. Open Mondays to Saturdays from 10am to 6pm. Free admission
■ Until Jan. 31
Photo courtesy of Michael Ku Gallery
In Unfinished Journey (未竟之途), Hsu Wei-hui (徐薇蕙) presents her experience of modern womanhood as a choose-your-own-adventure. Visitors enter via Unfinished Road (未竟之路), a corridor of broken asphalt that forks into two rooms: one dimly lit and thematically dark, the other bright and both containing sculptures made with commercial facial masks and mirrors. Hsu received her MA in painting from Savannah College of Art and Design and and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. This program includes an artist’s talk on Sunday from 3pm to 4:30pm.
■ MOCA Studio at the 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. Free admission
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Jan. 18
Photo courtesy of MOCA, Taipei
Art Feast (買得起 藝術博覽會) is a mini art fair of oil paintings, traditional ink paintings, photography, sculpture and installation by top Taiwanese artists. Organized by the Chinese Art Manage International Commerce Association (中華藝術經紀國際交流協會), the fair seeks to promote the local collector’s market with pieces priced at an average of NT$70,000 and as low as NT$3,500. The show ends Sunday with an auction at 6:30pm. For more information, visit www.aaftw.org.tw
■ Sogoart Gallery at F1, 162, Jianguo S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市建國南路一段162號一樓), tel: (02) 2711-3577. Open Mondays to Fridays from 10am to 8pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 11am to 8pm
■ Until Sunday
Chen Sung-chih (陳松志) makes delicate sculptures with socks and other objects found around the house, on view now at Another Place (別境). With this unassuming assortment, Chen builds an alternate realm that’s comforting and hypnotic. “If life is like a soap opera, Another Place is then a simple and ordinary script based on life, and the people on this distorted stage are induced to repeatedly recount intertwining everyday words of fiction and reality,” he writes in the gallery notes.
■ Project Fulfill Art Space (就在藝術空間), 2, Alley 45, Ln 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷45弄2號), tel: (02) 2707-6942. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 6pm
■ Opening reception tomorrow at 4pm. Until Jan. 17
Chinese artist Kuang Jun (匡峻) displays sculptures in a state of collapse at Decorative Metaphor — Atonement (裝飾中的修辭 — 贖罪), his first solo show in Taiwan. Kuang uses charred door frames, shattered glass and iron gratings detached from houses of China’s early Communist period — materials that are reassembled into crude stainless windows and figurines meant as emblems of a re-emerging consciousness.
■ 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
■ Opening reception at 3pm. Until Feb. 8
All in a Knowing Smile (拈花自在) is a retrospective of contemporary jade jewelry by Penny Wang (王佩南), a leading figure in today’s industry. The traditional jade ornament, historically worn as an expression of religious or moral qualities, is facing the challenge of a diminishing mainstream appeal. With edgy lines and visually ornate construction, Wang interprets unusual motifs like owls, turning the jade ornament of antiquity into quirky statement pieces.
■ 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 Jan. 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