The National Palace Museum teams up with City University of Hong Kong and Taichung City Seaport Art Center to present ANiMAL-Art Science Nature Society (動物藝想). The show features a selection of contemporary artworks and museum treasures that explore the animal world through the lens of art and science. From illustrations, paintings, video, sculpture to photography, the show reflects upon new and old imaginations of mythical creatures, scientific documentation of natural life and the changing relationship between animals and their environment. Curator and City University media art professor Jeffrey Shaw describes the show as an invitation for “visitors to listen to the extraordinary web of stories that emanate from the animal world” that promote appreciation of “universal wonders and inspirations.” Exhibition highlights include Compendium of Materia Medica (本草綱目), a Ming Dynasty encyclopedic classic that details almost 2,000 accounts of herbal medicine. Authored by the legendary Chinese doctor Li Shizhen (李時珍), the compendium is based on 16th century knowledge of plants as well as Li’s personal experiences practicing medicine. Illustrated Album of Sea Miscellany (海錯圖) is a Qing Dynasty publication of marine life drawings in China, including horseshoe crabs, snails, crabs and shrimp. The accounts of natural life are derived from author Nie Huang’s (聶璜) 20 years of travelling the coastal areas of China.
■ Taichung City Seaport Art Center (台中市港區藝術中心), 21, Jhongjhen Rd, Taichung City (台中市忠貞路21號), tel: (04) 2627-4568. Open Tuesday to Sunday from 9am to 5:30pm
■ Through May 5
Photo Courtesy of Xue Xue White Gallery
Celebrating the 70th anniversary of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall presents a group exhibition that seeks to address contemporary concerns for justice, truth and power. Under the Great Leader: Contemporary Human Rights Film and Video Exhibition (中正之下—當代人權影像展) includes eight documentaries and video artworks by local and international artists and filmmakers that explore themes of ideology, history and identity. Wang Ding-yeh’s (王鼎曄) Portrait Under Electric Shock (瘋狂電擊—中華民國國旗歌) is a video that features individuals singing the national anthem of the Republic of China while being electric-shocked on the cheeks. Their involuntary facial expressions triggered by the current of electricity satirically speak to the dictation of emotions embodied in national song. American filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt’s Human Remains is a documentary film that addresses the banality of evil through the study of five 20th century dictators, including Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Francisco Franco and Mao Zedong. “We learn the private and mundane details of their everyday lives—their favorite foods, films, habits and sexual preferences,” reads the film description.
■ Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (中正紀念堂) 21, Zhongshan S Rd, Taipei City (台北市中山南路21號), tel: (02) 2343-1100. Open Monday to Friday from 10am to 6pm, weekends from 9am to 6pm
■ Through March 17
Photo Courtesy of Huang yu-ling
Page Tsou (鄒駿昇) is a Taipei-based artist and illustrator with a background in Chinese ink painting and graphic design. Before moving back to Taiwan in 2011, Tsou spent six years in London working as a designer and artist. He has won a number of awards including the International Award for Illustration at the Bologna Children’s Art Fair and a gold medal for the 3x3 Professional show. Tsou’s solo exhibition From Stop to Start (啟示的起始—鄒駿昇個展) at Xue Xue White Gallery features a selection of drawings from six illustration projects. Tsou is known for his imaginative illustrations that tell fantastical stories rendered with an elegant, classical style. “Traveling across borders and diverse cultural aesthetics, Page’s artworks [resonates with]…new and old generations,” writes the gallery. Noah (諾亞方舟) is a drawing series that draws upon the biblical story of apocalypse. The series depicts endangered animals riding on hot air balloons, such as whales, elephants and foxes participating in playful scenes of interaction, as if alleviating the gravity of the topic of the end of the world. The Gift (禮物) is Tsou’s first Chinese illustration book that was commissioned by the Taipei Fine Art Museum. The book speaks of an art-loving boy and his surreal experiences visiting the museum.
■ XUE XUE White Gallery (學學白色展覽空間), 7F, 207, Tiding Boulevard Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市堤頂大道二段 207 號 7樓), tel: (02) 8751-6898 ext 321, Open daily from 11am to 5pm
■ Until April 28th
Photo Courtesy of Taiwan Digital Art Center
Presently on view at the Taiwan Digital Art Center is Paths to the Past (昨日的路徑), a solo exhibition by Taiwanese artist Wang Hsin-jen (王新仁). Wang specializes in multimedia art and is known for his laptop based audiovisual performances. He is also deeply involved in OpenLab Taipei, a hackerspace that promotes maker spirit and open source software. The show features a single virtual reality project by Wang entitled Paths to the Past (VR version). The project explores the concept of memory from the perspective of computer coding. Wang asks in the exhibition preface, “How can we understand the act of recalling in the age of algorithms? What are the feelings triggered by a memory and how are they triggered?” Using aerial photography, 3D rendering and field recordings altered by granular synthesis, the project offers a virtual experience of sound and sight that is based on the artist’s personal account of home. Every viewing experience is unique, says the artist, as the progression of the work is determined by real-time algorithmic operations. The unpredictable transformations that occur in the virtual space correspond to the ever-changing relationship between the artist and his memory.
■ Taiwan Digital Art Center (台灣數位藝術中心), B1, 431-1, Zhongshan N Rd, Taipei City (台北市中山北路六段431-1號B1), tel: (02) 7709-9091. Open Monday to Friday from 10:30am to 6pm.
■ Through March 15
Photo Courtesy of National Palace Museum
Tadpole Point (尖蚪) presents @ura Land, a solo exhibition by Taiwanese artist Huang Yu-ling (黃郁齡). Huang is a trans-disciplinary artist who works between painting, design, research and journalism. Her interests lie in social change and the relationship between art and society. During her graduate school years, Huang explored visual techniques for political protest and explored art and design as a tool for activism. In the past decade, Huang has been involved in a number of activist groups in Taiwan, Korea and Hong Kong. Her recent research in contemporary economies and virtual currencies is reflected in the title of the exhibition, which borrows from the language of blockchain, a cryptographic method that prevents modification of data. The selection of paintings featured in this show a six-year process of reassembling, digesting and responding to a personal memory significant to the artist. For Huang, her subjective experiences are intricately related to the conditions of society and its politics and economies.
■ Treasure Hill Artist Village, Tadpole Point (寶藏巖國際藝術村尖蚪) 57, Ln 230, Sec 3, Tingzhou Rd, Taipei City (台北市汀洲路三段230巷57號). Open Wednesday to Friday from 1pm to 8pm, weekends from 11am to 9pm
■ Until March 31
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