An online design magazine on Tuesday chose Taiwan’s pavilion at the London Design Biennale as one of the top 10 displays among the entries from 43 countries and territories.
Themed “Invisible Calls,” the Taiwan pavilion presents work by two new-media artists.
The display is worth seeing, Dezeen design editor Augusta Pownall said in her review of the 10 best installations at the show, which opened on Tuesday.
Photo: CNA
The first display by Wu Cheng-chang (吳政璋) plays on three tandem screens, and visitors should be sure to walk past the easy-to-miss gray curtain into the second room, where a film by Hsu Che-yu (許哲瑜) is screening, Pownall wrote.
“The work lays animation over real-life footage to tell the story of two events that happened in the artist’s hometown through his brother’s reaction to them; one an incident where teenagers murdered each other, the other a severed female head being found in the river,” Pownall said.
“Drawing on the practice of animating recent news events and posting them online that is widespread in Taiwanese media, the artist combines the memory of the forensic illustrator tasked with drawing the severed head with that of his brother,” Pownall said.
Pavilion curator Su Cheng-pu (蘇承璞) on Thursday said that the installations echo the biennale’s theme, “Emotional States,” and manifest a tendency in Asian society to suppress emotion.
The artists depict different emotions from various perspectives, from macro and micro observations, to explicitness and implicitness, Su said.
Wu, an assistant professor of visual communication design at Ling Tung University in Taichung, said it was the first time he created a work with three screens, which he titled The Noise Project of Scenic Landscape in Taiwan.
The installation depicts his observations of how Taiwanese culture, the habits of Taiwanese, and the political and economic development of the nation have affected the environment, he said.
He used lights to convey emotions and reflect the theme of the exhibition, Wu added.
The second edition of the biennale is being held until Sept. 23 at Somerset House.
Biennale chief executive Sumantro Ghose said many of the entries this year speak of cultural identity and a sense of belonging.
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