Malaysian artist Kerk Siew-chu’s (郭秀洙) colorful 3D collages and distorted sculptures are currently on display at her alma mater, the National Taiwan Normal University. Kerk Siew-chu Solo Exhibition (郭秀洙個展) displays only a small sample of Kerk’s work, most of which is inspired by her experience growing up in a large extended family in a kampong, or village. Death was an omnipresent part of life in the kampong, though Kerk presents death in a way that’s both beautiful and matter-of-fact. She does this through motifs such as the parasitic flower, the Rafflesia, which is native to Malaysia. Kerk also uses both natural (wood, clay) and manmade (recycled plastic bags) in her artwork, drawing attention to how we are harming the earth.
■ National Taiwan Normal University, Teh-chun Art Gallery, D Hall (師大德群畫廊D 廳), 1 Shida Rd, Taipei City (台北市大安區師大路1號), (02) 7734 3030. Open daily from 9am to 5pm.
■ Until May 4
Photo: Dana Ter, Taipei Times
MOCA, Taipei seeks to challenge exhibition concepts by hosting their latest show across two venues — the museum and the nearby Taiwan Air Force Innovation Base. Shattered Sanctity (破碎的神聖) derives its title from the French philosopher Marc Auge who posited that a country’s historical memory and sense of nationality consists of fragments of memories from different people. While not necessarily “accurate,” it tells a comforting narrative that gives people a sense of purpose and identity. The exhibition, which consists of installations from different artists, explores Taiwan’s troubled history and how the ideas of memory and identity are constantly being debated and reconstructed. Tomorrow’s opening party takes place at 2pm at MOCA and moves to TAF Innovation Base at 4:30pm.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (台北當代藝術館, 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
■ Taiwan Air Force Innovation Base (TAF空總創新基地), 177, Sec 1, Jianguo S Rd, Taipei City (台北市建國南路一段177號), tel: (02) 2771 8932. Open daily from 9am to 5pm
Photo courtesy of Hong-Gah Museum
■ Until June 11
While the Yilan-born Huang Ming-che (黃銘哲) got his start in realistic paintings of sunrises and farms in his picturesque hometown, he now paints and sculpts purely abstract anthropomorphic animals. Huang’s latest solo exhibition, Masterpiece Room (大師系列), held at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, explores fantastical creatures with feminine traits. There are still traces of influence from his realist training through, for instance, his warm color palate and a feeling of being connected to nature on a raw and visceral level.
Also at Kuandu is To Each Other (致彼此), a solo exhibition by New Zealand video artist Fiona Amundsen, which explores American propaganda during WWII. Named after an American WWII propaganda film meant to celebrate the country’s steel manufacturing capacity and the war effort on the home front, the show builds on Amundsen’s previous work on socio-cultural histories of the Pacific War and how they are memorialized across Asia and the Pacific. Like her other work, she uses archival imagery to explore the idea of who gets the right to remember while bringing to light previously unheard voices and perspectives.
Photo courtesy of TheCube Project Space
■ Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (關渡美術館), 1 Xueyuan Rd, Taipei City (台北市學園路1號), tel: (02) 2896-1000 X 2432. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 5pm
■ Both exhibitions run until June 18
Opening tomorrow at Hong-Gah Museum is Radical Forms of Writing (基進的書寫形式), a joint exhibition composed of artists from around the world. The exhibition explores the intersection of art and written language as well as how messages are transmitted without written text or dialogue per se. On display are reproduced texts of American performance artist Tim Youd who is currently working on his 100 Novels project, a feat which requires typing out word for word, entire novels written by 20th-century literary greats. Youd uses a typewriter to reproduce these novels in various sites across the US, an act which he sees as perpetuating literature and the arts. Also on display are Aida Silvestri’s blurred photographs of Eritrean refugees in London. Though these images lack words, their titles — the first names of the refugees — speaks volumes and gives a face, or at least some nuance, to the pressing issue of human trafficking.
Photo courtesy of Hong-Gah Museum
■ Hong-Gah Museum (鳳甲美術館), 11F, 166 Daye Rd, Taipei City (台北市大業路166號11樓), tel: (02) 2894-2272. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10:30am to 5:30pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until June 25
For the past few years, Taipei native Teng Chao-ming (鄧兆旻) has been inspired by pop culture’s influence on the constant remaking of Taiwanese history and identity. His latest solo exhibition, After All These Years (這麼多年過去), which opens at TheCube Project Space tomorrow, continues this exploration by delving into a popular but controversial 1934 pop song, Rainy Night Flowers, sung in Hoklo (more commonly known as Taiwanese). The 1930s saw a brief proliferation of Taiwanese pop songs under Japanese colonial rule as part of an attempt to reclaim Taiwanese identity. Teng’s installation is a rendering of the song into physical space — one major component will be more than 100 mirrors printed with the names of writers, playwrights and politicians — who have had some connection with the song since the 1930s. While it helps to reflect upon the song with the benefit of hindsight and situating it within a larger narrative, the result is still puzzling, though intriguingly so.
Photo courtesy of Kerk Siew-chu
■ 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 Wednesday to Sunday from 2pm to 8pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until July 2
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
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
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