For a special exhibition about ancient Egyptian life and its funerary practices, visit the National Palace Museum’s current show Egyptian Mummies from the British Museum: Exploring Ancient Lives. The exhibition features six individuals who lived in Egypt from circa 900 BC to 180 AD. “They have been carefully chosen to throw light on different aspects of life and death along the banks of the Nile,” states the museum. With new scanning technology and other non-invasive analysis techniques, the British Museum has discovered new information about the mummified individuals, including their age, causes of death and other knowledge about their lives. Highlights in the exhibition include four deity-protected limestone vessels used to preserve the deceased person’s organs so that they could be used in the afterlife; a statue of Anubis, a funerary god who resembles a canine and safeguards the burial grounds; and the mummy of a young elite child wearing a gilded mask and holding a bouquet of roses and myrtle.
■ National Palace Museum (故宮博物院), 221, Zhishan Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市至善路二段221號), tel: (02) 2881-2021. Open Mondays to Fridays from 9am to 5pm
■ Through Feb. 18
Photo Courtesy of Yo-Chang Art Museum
Mind Set Art Center begins the year with a group exhibition that reflects on the general state of agitation in the world today. According to a statement by the gallery, “The world is overflowing with information, national boundaries are blurred, and the remains of history blend with the imagination of the future.” Chaos (混沌劇場) features 20 recent paintings by three Taiwanese and Chinese artists born between the late 70s and early 80s. While Rao Fu (傅饒), Jhong Jiang-ze (鐘江澤) and Tang Jo-hung (黨若洪) work with different painting methods and interests, they share a pictorial affinity to “chaotic tension and dynamics.” Rao is a Dresden-based Chinese artist whose paintings of abstract figures in dark landscapes are often treated in a manner that blends the aesthetics of Western romanticism and Chinese landscape painting. Using a combination of oil paints and bitumen, Fu’s expressive washes and wide brushstrokes open ominous, boundless spaces for contemplation. Jhong’s Pupa depicts a reclining nude woman enshrouded by layers of turbulent brushstrokes. His paintings are luminous, often preferring fragmented compositions that suggest a movement towards disintegration and a release of energy. Tang’s Youth with a Walking Stick is a painting of a thoughtful gentleman dressed in suit posing against an anxious, red-and-blue striped backdrop.
■ Mind Set Art Center (安卓藝術) 108, Heping E Rd, Taipei City (台北市和平東路108號), tel: (02) 2365-6008. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 11am to 6pm
■ Through Feb. 10
Photo courtesy of TKG+
While exhibitions and performances are commonly understood as categorically separate art forms, the group exhibition Air Plant (空氣草) organized by the National Taiwan University of Arts (國立台灣藝術大學) seeks to create an opportunity for dialogue between the two fields of practice. The show includes 22 artists from France, the US, Sweden and Taiwan who work in either or both fields and present in this exhibition collaborative or individual artworks or performances. Curated by Chang Chun-yi (張君懿), the exhibition space is inhabited by art objects and props, art installations and theatrical spaces as well as actions and performances during scheduled times. The exhibition title refers to a type of vegetation that does not need soil to grow. Chang takes the plant’s ability to survive without rooting into soil as a metaphor for the resilience and adaption of artists to different conditions. French dance choreographer Christian Rizzo creates a staged space that features objects, symbols and documentation of his performance art projects in the last 15 years. Riverbed Theatre (河床劇團) presents a new, Freud-inspired work that invites the viewers to wander in a dream-like narrative between reality and imagination.
■ Yo-Chang Art Museum (有章藝術博物館), 59, Daguan Rd Sec 1, Banqiao Dist, New Taipei City (新北市板橋區大關路一段59號), tel: (02) 2272-2181 ext. 2454. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 10am to 5pm
■ Through Jan. 14
Photo Courtesy of National Palace Museum
Extrastellar Evaluations III: Entropy: 25800 (超星鑑定III:熵:25800) is a solo exhibition by Chen Yin-ju (陳瀅如) with an unnerving premise: “As doomsday draws near, will humanity realize the catastrophic consequences of its actions and attain the final awakening before it is too late?” The artist is known for her explorations of occultist topics such an extraterrestrial myths and cosmography, and in this exhibition she reveals a new prediction of doomsday through a study of several ancient myths and NASA calculations. The exhibition features a single-channel video that includes historical images of wars and disasters, spiritual narrations and scientific predictions of the world’s fate. On view are also charcoal drawings that depict meticulously drawn, geometrical patterns suggestive of cosmological calculations.
■ TKG+, B1, 15, Ruiguang Rd Ln 548, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號B1), tel: (02) 2659-0798. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Through Feb. 14
Photo courtesy of Liang Gallery
Naotsugu Yoshida is a Japanese ceramicist who creates handcrafted, monochromatic cups, bowls, vases, and other containers with a minimalist aesthetic. Yoshida makes it clear that he is not creating art — with a reductive approach to his craft, the ceramicist takes away qualities that express individual personality to reveal the more basic virtues of his ceramic work. Yoshida’s current exhibition at Xiaoqi +g shows a selection of his most recent works, which continue his discipline in black, white and gray containers that are fired his studio at the foothills of Mount Fuji. This is his fourth exhibition with the gallery; the regular appearance of his work allows familiar viewers to witness the subtle developments in his craft.
■ Xiaoqi +g (小器藝廊), 4, Ln 17, Chifeng St, Taipei City (台北市赤峰街17巷4號), tel: (02) 2559-9260. Open daily from 12pm to 8pm
■ Through Jan. 10
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