Patrick Zachmann is an award-winning French photographer who hasdedicated himself to over the past four decades to creating documentary projects, books and video films that examine themes of memory, identity and immigration. Zachmann is a member of Magnum, a prestigious international cooperative of photojournalists established after the World War II. “I became a photographer because I have no memory,” Zachmann says. “Photography allows me to reconstruct the family albums I never had, the missing images becoming the engine of my research.” A solo exhibition of his work, SO LONG, CHINA (馬格蘭紀實攝影大師 — Patrick Zachmann 特展), is currently on view at the newly-opened Leica Store in Taipei. Featuring a selection of photographs taken in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the show offers a subjective angle of these regions from a foreigner’s point of view and observations of changes in daily life over the last 40 years. Exhibition highlights include Taiwan, Taipei. 1987, a portrait of Taiwanese policemen during a celebration organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT); Suzhou, 1995 is a cinematic shot of film star Gong Li (鞏俐) and Leslie Cheung (張國榮) during a film scene of Temptress Moon (風月) directed by Chen Kai-ge (陳凱歌).
■ House of Leica, Taipei Qingtian (萊卡之家), 3, Ln 6, Qingtian Rd, Taipei City (台北市青田街六巷3號), tel: (02) 2391-2593. Open daily from 11am to 7pm
■ Until May 5
Photo Courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei
Chen Chien-pei (陳建北) is a Taiwanese artist who works between photography, video and installation. He was one of the participating artists of the Venice Biennial Taiwan Pavilion in 1997; he taught studio arts at the Tainan National University of Arts until retiring in 2014. Chen’s current solo exhibition, Midwife Overture (助產序曲), at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei), is a culmination of works from his 2016 residency in Tainan. The show deals with Tainan’s history of midwives and childbirth, from the Qing Dynasty to the present. The museum writes that during the 1950s and 1960s, most women didn’t give birth in a hospital or clinic because they were too expensive. Instead, they used midwifes. Based on research, interviews and personal memories of his family’s past, the show features artifacts, documents and videos collected by the artist, including a birthing chair, a map of old Tainan that marks the location of a midwive’s house, and personal letters submitted by open call. The letters “bear heartfelt messages dedicated to their significant other on pregnancy, motherhood, and nurturing, offering a reassessment on family and intimacy in modern society,” writes the museum.
■ 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) 2559-6615. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm
■ Until March 24
Photo Courtesy of Leica Store Taipei
Of a Feather Flocking Together: Birds, Flowers, and Fruit in Melodic Harmony (來禽圖—翎毛與花果的和諧奏鳴) is a thematic exhibition of paintings about birds at the National Palace Museum. The works range over a broad period of time, from the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, as well as works from the modern era. Appreciation of birds has been a popular leisure activity among the literati and such persistent affection is demonstrated by the museum’s vast collection of 2,000 bird paintings. The collection shows a wide span of styles, formats and compositions of birds together with fruit and flowers. Many paintings show a particular attention to the details of bird feathers, including Flycatcher and Loquats (枇杷綬帶), a Song Dynasty painting of a beautiful, long-tailed Asian paradise flycatcher perched on a branch of a loquat tree. The work is attributed to Xu Chongsi (徐崇嗣), a master painter of a style called “boneless painting,” which uses washes of color and avoids outlined contours. Another Song Dynasty master painter Cui Bai (崔白) also favored bird and flower subjects; Peacocks and the Loquat Tree (華枇杷孔雀) is a picture of a male peacock in an elaborate garden scenery of loquat trees, flowers and garden rocks. The show also includes modern photographs of birds that offer a comparison of how artists explore visual languages through different mediums and times.
■ National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院), 221 Zhishan Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市至善路二段221號), tel: (02) 2881-2021. Open daily from 8:30am to 6:30pm; closes at 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays
■ Until April 28
Photo Courtesy of National Palace Museum
On the Verge of Fiction (虛寫邊界) is a group exhibition of young and emerging artists from Japan and Taiwan that aims to promote cultural exchange and discussions concerning historical memory. Working between fact and fiction, participating artists are invited to respond to themes of social geography, political and cultural history and contemporary society. Curator Hayato Fujioka bases his definition of fiction on Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. “Harari describes [fiction] as an imagined reality and lying... it is expressed in mythology and religion and allows for large numbers of people to cooperate,” writes Fujioka. The show seeks to “interrogate the fictionality in our living world” and reconsider the reality we live in today. Exhibition highlights include Chen Fei-hao’s (陳飛豪) Love Suicide at Snow Melting Train: New Shikoku Pilgrimage in Taipei (心中雪解車:台北新四國八十八所靈場), a single channel video and historical documentation about the death of a prostitute in Taipei during Japanese colonial rule. Chen Ting-chun’s (陳亭君) The Border Room (邊境之屋) is a oil painting that depicts a theatrical setting created through deconstructing pictures, collaging and appropriation. Kenta Kawagoe’s Drapes 7 is sculptural piece created by layers of inkjet print mounted on a paper box.
■ 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
■ Until April 7
Photo Courtesy of Mangasick
Usamaru Furuya is a Tokyo-born manga artist known for his poignant drawing style and absurdist narratives. With a background in oil painting, sculpture and butoh dance, Furuya initially pursued a career in fine arts but quickly gained recognition in the cartoon industry after graduating from college. His seminal manga series, Litchi Hikai Club, is an adaptation of an 80’s Japanese puppet production that deeply influenced the artist in his youth. The manga series substantially adds to the original story and tells a horrific tale of a middle school boys club based in an abandoned industrial factory. While the club’s mission is to create an artificial intelligence for the purpose of abducting beautiful girls, the story explores questions of beauty, adulthood and the moral boundaries of desires. In celebration of the newly published Chinese edition, Mangasick is hosting a solo exhibition, Litchi Hikai Club, by the artist. The show includes a selection of original drawings from the manga series as well as other works. Copies of the publication are available for purchase at the gallery.
■ Mangasick, B1, 2, Alley 10, Ln 244, Roosevelt Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路3段244巷10弄2號B1), tel: (02) 2369-9969. Opens Thursdays to Tuesdays from 2pm to 10pm
■ Until March 4
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
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby