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
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