Ceramic artist Tseng Tai-yang (曾泰洋) creates earthy pieces of pottery for his latest exhibition, Journey to the Stars (星際遨遊), at New Taipei City’s Yingge Ceramics Museum. The ceramics on display represent the five elements in Chinese philosophy — earth, fire, water, wood and metal — and each piece emanates a calm and meditative feel. The purpose, according to the museum, is to show the endless possibilities of ceramics, notably its aesthetic and even spiritual value. The exhibition’s name and description might be a bit of a stretch — “a song of the trials of earth” — but Tseng’s ceramics really are pretty, especially the tiny ones that look like potted plants.
■ Yingge Ceramics Museum (鶯歌陶瓷博物館), 200 Wenhua Rd, New Taipei City (新北市文化路200號), tel: (02) 8677-2727. Open Mondays to Fridays from 9:30am to 5pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 9:30am to 6pm, closed first Monday of the month
■ Until Dec. 20
Video artist Hsiao Mei-ling (蕭美玲), who lived and studied in France, has a new exhibition opening at Taipei’s Digital Art Center tomorrow. Entitled Souvenirs Revenants (彼方 / 視逝), it consists of a series of video installations in which Hsiao projects MRI scans of her brain alongside video footage of her personal life, as well as streets and airports around France and Taiwan. Throughout the screening, memories blur and time frames overlap, the result of which makes the viewer feel like he or she is standing in multiple places at the same time. It’s obvious that Hsiao misses France, and the artwork is, in part, an attempt to reconcile both parts of her identity.
■ Digital Art Center (台北數位藝術中心), 180, Fuhua Rd, Taipei City (台北市福華路180號), tel: (02) 7736-0708. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Dec. 27
Photo courtesy of Digital Art Center
Short-term Memory (暫存記憶) is a joint exhibition at Taipei Artist Village by various artists from around the world, including Julien Coignet, Humberto Duque and Kaensan Rattanasomerk, working in a variety of mediums, from painting to sculptural installation. As you may have guessed, it centers on short-term memory, especially its inaccuracies and biases. We tend to categorize things in order of importance, and often times the details and “facts” we deem as unimportant are filtered into our short-term memories. In other words, short term memory is similar to photography in the sense that it captures snippets of reality or elements of truth. The exhibition, which is at once both scientific and artistic, does a fine job at obfuscating truth and revealing what we choose to forget.
■ Barry Room, Taipei Artist Village (台北國際藝術村百里廳), 7 Beiping E Rd, Taipei City (台北市北平東路7號), tel: (02) 3393-7377. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 9pm
■ Until Jan. 3
Photo courtesy of Project Fulfill Art Space
Hong Kong artist Lee Kit’s (李傑) homely style of depicting working-class domestic simplicity — worn-out bedsheets and table cloths are a fixture in his installations — and Lai Chih-sheng’s (賴志盛) obsession with dismantling old structures and piecing them back together in new ways, form the perfect symbiosis in their joint exhibition, At (就在), at Project Fulfill Art Space. Like most of the gallery’s shows, it is minimalistic and conceptual — as in you sometimes think that you’re looking at a blank wall, when it is, indeed, a piece of art. The title alludes to the gallery’s Chinese name, which connotes a sense of being present in the moment. The message is as simple as that: enjoy the moment, regardless of how modest it is.
■ 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
■ Jan. 10
The prints of emerging artist Huang Chih-cheng (黃至正) evoke a sense of nostalgia for the age of exploration and discovery. Maps overlaid with ink blotches and scientific-looking diagrams of anything from insects to buildings conjure up the feeling of an intrepid traveler trying to make sense of the world. In fact, Huang’s intention is to capture the relationship between humans, animals and nature, thus the voyage motif can be seen as allegorical, as the real journey is one of self-discovery. Huang’s prints uphold the old adage that through the “other,” we can better understand ourselves. His artwork is currently on display at Taipei’s A Gallery, in an exhibition entitled Roaming the Shores (彼岸遊蕩).
■ A Gallery (當代一畫廊), 22, Alley 36, Lane 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷36弄22號), tel: (02) 2702-3327. Open Mondays to Saturdays from 10am to 6pm
■ Until Jan. 16
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built