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
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