Joy Luck’s Mirror Garden (喬‧伊拉克希的鏡花園) is a Taiwanese artistic rendition of Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club. The premise of the joint exhibition that includes Dong Fang-lan (董芳蘭), Yang Pi (楊碧), Hesper Lang (郎亞玲), Cloudy Lin (林小雲), Cecilia Yen (顏司音), Tsai Hai-ju (蔡海如) and Teresa Shih (施又熙) revolves around the lives of second-generation family friends whose parents suffered during Taiwan’s period of Martial Law, also known as the White Terror. Utilizing visual arts, theatrical dance and archival literature, the exhibition not only explores relationships between female friends and mothers and daughters, but also between the family and the state. By doing so, it delves into an artistic world which was once subverted.
■ Frees Art Space (福利社), B1, 82, Xinsheng N Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市新生北路三段82號B1); tel: (02) 2585-7600. Open Tuesdays to Fridays from 11am to 7pm, Saturdays 1:30pm to 9pm, closed Sundays and Mondays
■ Until Jan. 10
Photo courtesy of Frees Artspace
Lin & Lin Gallery is currently showcasing the works of the late Guangzhou-born, Los Angeles-raised Chinese-American artist George Chann (陳蔭羆) in an exhibition entitled George Chann (陳蔭羆). In a career that spanned the 1940s to the 1990s, Chann was most well-known for using Chinese calligraphic characters as the base for his abstract paintings. In his earlier work, he addressed social issues such as poverty in Los Angeles along with cultural issues like his Chinese identity. In the 1940s, he painted scenes from Chinatown using melancholic but lively hues of blue, as well as grotesque-looking people with sunken, war-torn eyes. Although his later works were more purely abstract, there’s still a sense of the same sorts of intricacies with laced lines created by Chann’s signature frenzied brushstrokes.
■ Lin & Lin Gallery (大未來林舍畫廊), 16 Dongfeng St, Taipei City (台北市東豐街16號), tel: (02) 2700-6866. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until Jan. 4
Photo courtesy of tamtamArt Taipei
Tina Keng Gallery currently has an exhibition on the work of Chinese artist Su Xiaobai (蘇笑柏). Su is known for his sculptural-like paintings which blend Western abstract art with the rigor and refinement of traditional Chinese painting techniques. His solo exhibition Xiaobai Su: 2012-2014 (蘇笑柏: 2012-2014) at displays his lacquer paintings over linen and wood objects. The act is symbolic of creating new memories of the homeland. Su also toys with the viewer’s mind, leaving them pondering about concepts of space and dimension since his work shifts between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional.
■ 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 Feb. 15
Photo courtesy of Trustees of the British Museum
Silent Audacity (沉默果敢) is Japanese artist Sayaka Ohata’s first solo exhibition in Taipei. Held at the hipster-bohemian military residence-turned-artist village, Treasure Hill, the exhibition explores “a silent inner force that stimulates our imagination to act” — according to the gallery notes. Ohata doesn’t have a preferred choice of medium. Instead, she utilizes a wide range, from paintings to videos and installations, to create an overall sense of imagined space. The result is simultaneously reflective and haunting. Ohata is a self-identifying “international artist” and is based in Tokyo and Paris.
■ Treasure Hill Artist Village’s (寶藏巖國際藝術村) CrossGallery (十字藝廊), 2, Alley 14, Ln 230, Dingzhou Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市汀州路三段230巷14弄2號), tel: (02) 2364-5313. Open Tuesday to Sundays from 11am to 6pm, closed Mondays and Wednesdays
■ Until Jan. 14
While Ohata’s exhibition at Treasure Hill is about hashing out resolute silence, South Korean artistsAn Jung-ju and Jun So-jung are always experimenting with new and subdued ways of incorporating sound into their video art. The title of their latest exhibition, Why does the wind blow whenever we remember loved ones? (為何每當我們憶起心所愛的,眼底總是一陣風吹沙?), is derived from the 1995 Serbian film Underground. The film is about two friends wandering through war-torn former Yugoslavia, from World War II to the country’s disintegration in 1992. Likewise, An and Jun’s work is as much a visual and audio record of their own artistic journey as a duo as it is an exploration of the concept of individuality in modern day-to-day life. Their exhibition is divided into two parts, with videos being screened at TheCube Project Space and sound at tamtamArt Taipei.
■ Part 1 (video) at TheCube Project Space (立方計畫空間), 2F, 13, Alley 1, Ln 136, Roosevelt Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路四段136巷1弄13號2樓), tel: (02) 2368-9418. Open Wednesdays through Sundays from 2pm to 8pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until March 8
■ Part 2 (narratives and sound) at tamtamArt Taipei .Ipix, 20-3, Beiping E Rd, Taipei City (台北市北平東路20-3號); Open Thursdays to Fridays from 5pm to 8pm, Saturdays and Sundays 2pm to 7pm
■ Until Jan. 10
The National Palace Museum, in conjunction with London’s British Museum, held their grand opening last week for their latest exhibition, A History of the World in 100 Objects (另眼看世界:大英博物館百品特展). Consisting of a hundred objects from China to Egypt to Mexico, with many discoveries dating back thousands of years, the exhibition is a grand archeological display of different world civilizations. One of the oldest objects to be showcased is the Olduvai stone chopping tool from Tanzania, dating back to nearly two million years. The newest object is a solar-powered lamp kit made in China in 2010. From pots and pans to weaponry and maps, the exhibition highlights the innate human propensity to not only survive, but also thrive through exploration and conquest — all of which is testament to the fact that different world civilizations are in reality, not that different.
■ National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院), 221 Zhishan Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市至善路二段221號), tel: (02) 2881-2021. Open daily from 9am to 5pm. Regular admission: NT$250
■ Until March 15
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist