Taiwanese artist Vincent Huang (黃瑞芳), representing Tuvalu at one of the world’s premier contemporary art exhibitions, has created a “flooded pavilion” to highlight the perils facing the South Pacific island country as a result of climate change.
Huang’s latest project, developed in cooperation with Dutch-born curator Thomas Berghuis, is now on display at Tuvalu’s national pavilion at the Venice Biennial, which is being held May 9 to Nov. 22 in Italy under the theme All the World’s Futures.
The installation, titled Crossing the Tide, adopts ideas from the Taoist classic book Zhuangzi, focusing on the concept of “man and nature as one,” Huang told CNA.
Photo: EPA, Andrea Merola
Spread over 300 square meters, the pavilion addresses the issue of mankind’s pursuit of economic and material gains in today’s capitalist world and the impact on the natural environment, the 44-year-old artist said.
“The installation depicts a scene of only the sea and the sky, symbolizing the disappearance of land masses” as a result of rising sea levels caused by global warming, said Huang, who has visited Tuvalu twice to set up eco-art projects aimed at drawing attention to the country’s vulnerability to climate change.
To create a sea effect, Huang’s team pumped water from Venice’s canals to the venue, while clouds are created by machines ejecting smoke every 10 minutes. Wooden bridges have been erected at the venue to allow visitors to cross the “sea,” Huang said.
“The sea is crystal blue, because that is the color of Tuvalu’s lagoon,” he said.
The display, which cost about NT$12 million (US$394,000) to produce, has grabbed the attention of the international media and attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors, Huang said.
The Tuvalu government’s special envoy, parliamentarian Samuelu Penitala Teo, has also visited the pavilion and has seen what art can do for his country, Huang said.
Through the project, Huang hopes to provoke people into thinking about environmental justice.
Developing countries such as Tuvalu are at risk because of developed countries’ pursuit of economic gains and massive carbon emissions, he said.
The flooded pavilion not only addresses the crisis facing Tuvalu, but also echoes the situation regarding Venice, which is surrounded by water and is also sinking because of rising sea levels, Huang said.
Huang said he will return to Italy later this year to organize other events at the Venice Biennial.
To continue his efforts to help Tuvalu, he said, he is planning to launch an online crowdfunding platform to help Tuvalu fight its environmental crisis.
A low-lying nation, Tuvalu could be one of the first victims of rising sea levels caused by global climate change.
It is the second time that Huang has been commissioned by the Tuvalu government to organize the country’s national pavilion at the Venice Biennial.
He also worked on Tuvalu’s behalf at exhibitions held in conjunction with the UN climate change conferences in 2012 and 2013.
Concerned about the peril of rising sea levels faced by Tuvalu, one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, Huang visited the country in 2010 and 2012, setting up art installations to draw attention to the crisis.
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
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s
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
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