So Far So Right (走私) is a group exhibition that engages with post-communist narratives and their developments since the end of the Cold War era. Primarily featuring perspectives of diaspora and transnational experiences, the exhibition presents artistic responses to geopolitical relations, boundaries, and agendas that make up the ever-shifting state of global governance. Bulgarian artist Kosta Tonev’s The Heavenly Bodies, Thrown into a Certain Definite Motion, Always Repeat is a series of still life drawings that explore the relationship between time, history, labor and exchange. The drawings include items such as the pleasure wheel, a manually operated, ferris wheel-like contraption from the Ottoman Empire; the Soviet Calendar, an alternative system of time that features five and six day week cycles, and the 100 Leva note, a short-lived currency issued after the dissolution of the Bulgarian Communist Party. UuDam Tran Nguyen’s Time Boomerang is a witty video performance and sculpture that illustrates the nature of transnational powers with a metaphorical act of cutting off the fingers of a metal cast hand and placing them in different oceans across a world map. Chen Szu-Han’s (陳思含) How to Stage an Archetype of Negotiation? reflects on the idea of negotiating political borders by a process of abstracting journalist photographs of war frontiers.
■ Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (關渡美術館), 1, Xueyuan Road, Beitou District, Taipei City (台北市學院路1號), tel: (02) 2893 8180. Open Tuesdays to Fridays from 10am to 5pm
■ Through Feb. 25
Photo Courtesy of Jut Art Museum
Imagining Memorial (後解嚴:想像紀念館) at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (中正紀念堂) is a four-month program of art exhibitions, workshops and talks that aim to foster public dialogue about the future of the memorial hall. As Taiwan celebrates its 30th year since the lifting of the martial law, “the Ministry of Culture wishes to give back the people’s rights to re-interpret the memorial hall,” says Deputy Minister of Culture Celestine Ding (丁曉菁). The show includes videos, photographs, installations and participatory projects by eight artists as well as three conceptual proposals submitted by local architectural teams. Artist Chang Li-ren’s (張立人) Battle City is an animated video that shows a fictional battle headlined by 3D caricatures fighting in a Taiwanese cityscape. Chen Ching-yao’s (陳擎耀) International Radio Exercise is a multi-channel video that re-enacts the mandatory exercise program nationally broadcast in schools across Korea, Japan, and Taiwan during the Japanese occupation era. Architectural studio BIAS proposes the construction of a continually updated, 1:1000 model of the island of Taiwan that would stand in place of the current memorial hall building.
■ Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (中正紀念堂) 21, Zhongshan S Rd, Taipei City (台北市中山路21號), tel: (02) 2343 1100. Open daily from 9am to 6pm
■ Through April 8
Photo courtesy of Ms Hsu’s Paperweight
Jut Art Museum’s (忠泰美術館) A Decade: Our Urban Imagination and Adventures (十年,我們的城市想像與冒險) commemorates the 10th anniversary of Jut Foundation for Arts and Architecture (忠泰建築文化藝術基金會). Curated by Su Yao-hua (蘇瑤華), the exhibition includes an archive of artworks, architectural models, and documents that show the making of exhibitions organized by the foundation in the last ten years. The foundation’s program has consistently explored the future of urban spaces through contemporary art and urban architectural design programs. Artworks featured in this exhibition include Susumu Shingu’s Wings of Time, a group of kinetic sculptures with elegant, arching wings that were first exhibited by the foundation seven years ago in a rice field in New Taipei City. Lin Chuan-chu’s (林銓居) Rice for Thoughts is another agriculture related project that transformed an idle piece of urban land into a rice farm as part of a foundation project in 2007. This work harks back to the artist’s familial roots in farming and his ongoing contemplations on nature and man.
■ Jut Art Museum (忠泰美術館) 178, Civic Blvd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市市民大道三段178號), tel: (02) 8772 6178. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm
■ Through Feb. 25
Stanley Fung (馮君藍) is a pastor and award-winning artist who is currently showing a collection of faith-inspired photographs at Gallery 100. Fung was born in Hong Kong and moved with his father to Taiwan at an early age to set up the first ministry in Chiayi. His passion for photography was first inspired by the work of Juan I-jong (阮義忠), who later praised Fung’s work as “poetic portraits of the soul.” Fung considers his creative process as “a part of religious contemplation” and in this exhibition, he shows seven series of photographs of still-lifes, landscapes and enacted anecdotes that reveal his insights on humanity, life and holiness. In the photograph Revelation, a blue petal lies gently on the edge of a worn, hard copy book with leather binding. The book is set against a pitch-black background, which dramatizes the scene with cinematic passion perhaps in search of a suspended state of extraordinary.
■ Gallery 100 (百藝畫廊), 1F, 13, Ln 252, Dunhua S Rd, Taipei (台北市敦化南路1段252巷13號1樓), tel: (02) 2731-0876. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 11am to 7pm
■ Through Dec. 30
Ku Kuo-hsuan (古國萱) loves the simplicity of paper cutting — with just a pair of scissors and paper, she creates forms without premeditated sketches. Her exhibition from EARTH (土之生) at Ms. Hsu’s Paperweights keeps to a minimal presentation and features a loose cluster of paper streams hung from the ceiling. Light casts shadows of the paper onto the wall, creating an atmosphere of quietude and lightness. The cluster is composed of two paper stream projects that explore the themes of earth and rain respectively. Rain is a series of cutouts that spell out poetic verses she has gathered from her friends. Though the Chinese characters are small and hard to read, the viewer may grasp an overall impression of their literary meanings. Earth is a group of abstract forms inspired by the idea of growth; the artist works spontaneously as she cuts through paper, responding to the material quality and developing imagery. Through paper cutting, Ku reveals her observations and insights about the world and everyday life.
■ Ms Hsu’s Paperweights, 25, Ln 62, Zhongshan N Rd, Taipei City (台北市中山北路二段62巷27號), tel: (02) 2542-1220. Open Mondays to Fridays from 10am to 6pm, Saturdays to Sundays 1pm to 6pm
■ Through Jan. 1
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
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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