Sawangwongse Yawnghwe is a Netherlands-based artist from Myanmar. He is the grandson of Sao Shwe Thaik, the first president of Myanmar after the country gained independence from Britain in 1948. Yawnghwe grew up in Canada where his family had been driven into exile after a military coup in 1962. Through paintings and installations, the artist engages with his family history as well as the present and past history of his country. Yawnghwe Office in Exile / State Museum / Absoluter Gegenstoss / Absolute Recoil (良瑞流亡辦公室|國家博物館:絕對反叛) is a solo exhibition and the title refers to a fictional office in exile and a state museum that “is impossible to exist even in today’s Burma,” writes TKG+ Projects in a press release. “Democratized on the surface, Burma’s political structure is still heavily influenced by military intervention.” The show explores the history of Shan exiles and the suppression of their history by the Burmese military forces. Yawnghwe works with photographs of his grandparents, father and uncle when they were involved in military and political organizations. The exhibition asks: “Is there truth in history? Do the historical facts that are taken for granted equal to reality, even truth?”
■ TKG+ Projects, B1, 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, 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
■ Until July 7
Photo Courtesy of National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts
The Taipei Fine Arts Museum (台北市立美術館) presents In the Sunshine of the Relaxed Majorities (在放鬆的多數的陽光中), a solo exhibition by Taiwanese artist James Ming-hsueh Lee (李明學). The title draws on the writings of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, who discusses the meaning of visual symbols and experiences in relation to social values. Lee centers his practice on the idea of “relaxed-aesthetics,” which refers to a negation of method in his treatment of theory and practice. Through image and text, Lee examines paradoxical moments that encompass a mixture of conditions, including sadness and happiness, misunderstanding and understanding. Such moments are hard to describe through language and can be more aptly processed through visual metaphors, says the artist. Lee reinterprets familiar items in his everyday life, creating absurd and playful readings and misreadings that draw attention to the flexibility of definitions and the possibility of multiple meanings.
■ Taipei Fine Arts Museum (台北市立美術館 TFAM), 181, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 3, Taipei (台北市中山北路三段181號), tel: (02) 2595-7656. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm and until 8:30pm on Saturdays
■ Until July 21
Photo Courtesy of Taipei Fine Art Museum
Currently on view at Mumu Gallery (木木藝術) is a solo exhibition by Japanese artist Yuya Suzuki. Suzuki participated in a Tainan’s Soulangh Artist Village residency program (蕭?國際藝術村) in 2017 and debuted his first show in Taiwan at Absolute Space for the Art (絕對空間) in the following year. Suzuki’s practice encompasses a range of mediums including drawing, video, sculpture and painting. His work explores cognitive strategies, ideas of simulation and abstraction of urban landscapes. In an essay dedicated to his work, curator Anca Mihulet writes about the artist’s almost compulsive way of reproducing reality; he creates abstract shapes based on observations of the city, which serve as signs of secrecy, truth and memory. New Excavation continues his exploration of the urban environment by reflecting on what he terms cracks in reality — objects and situations that deviate from their original function. While Suzuki has carries out his studies in many cities, he engagee with dimensions that speak to the universal.
■ Mumu Gallery (木木藝術), 50, Minde Rd, Tainan City (台南市民德路50號), tel: (06) 252-6121. Open Mondays to Saturdays from 10am to 6pm
■ Until June 22
Photo Courtesy of TKG Plus
Chen Po-i (陳伯義) is a Taiwanese artist and curator with a background in oceanic engineering. He is known for creating photographs that highlight humanitarian concerns and social issues in Taiwan. Chen says the camera can be used to express the collective memories of Taiwan. Chen’s solo show, Firework Baptist (食炮人), at VT Art Salon (非常廟藝文空間), features a series of photographs taken during Tainan’s Yanshui Beehive Fireworks (台南鹽水蜂炮), a large religious celebration that takes place every year during Lantern Festival. Legend has it that a terrible plague broke out during the Qing dynasty; people prayed to the God of War (Guan Gong, 關公), who instructed them to parade his statue throughout the streets and set off firecrackers along his path. People today join the procession decked out in full body protection and helmets to be blasted with heavy doses of firecrackers. The more people are bombarded, the better their luck in the next year. “People put up with the pain…to pray for fortune and health,” writes the gallery.
■ VT Art Salon (非常廟藝文空間), B1, 47 Yitong St, Taipei City (台北市伊通街47號B1), tel: (02) 2516-1060. Open Tuesdays to Thursdays from 1:30pm to 9pm, and Fridays and Saturdays from 1:30pm to 10pm
■ Until July 6
Photo Courtesy of VT Art Salon
Chen Han-sheng (陳漢聲) is a Taiwanese artist who works with experimental animation, mixed media art and kinetic installations. Chen explores topics related to his identity and background, and Once Lake—Field Now (湖底 尖山腳), currently on view at National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (國立台灣美術館), is inspired by his hometown of Dashe District (大社) in Kaohsiung, where his family owns a plot of farmland. Chen grew up at a time when most of his peers came from farming families. As neighboring areas continued to build chemical plants, Chen’s father eventually became the only farmer in his village. Social developments and the changing relations with the land are issues Chen examines, and draws from the legacy of his grandfather and his attitude towards living. The plot of land passed down by his grandfather bears personal significance to the artist as a place of childhood memories. The exhibition includes collected artifacts, real-time images juxtaposed with animations that create a sense of split reality divided by temporal difference.
■ National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (國立台灣美術館), 2, Wuquan W Rd Sec 1, Taichung City (台中市五權西路一段2號), tel: (04) 2373-3552. Open Tuesdays to Fridays from 9am to 5pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 9am to 6pm
■ Until July 14
Photo Courtesy of MUMU Gallery
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless