An exhibition of photograps by Liu Xia (劉霞), the widow of Chinese democracy advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), is to be held at Taipei’s Museum of Contemporary Art in March, the museum’s director said on Friday.
The poet and photographer is unlikely to open the exhibition in person, because of concerns that the Chinese authorities might be upset if she visited Taiwan, risking the safety of her brother, who lives in Beijing, director Yuki Pan (潘小雪) said.
“To avoid the consequence [she is] unwilling to see,” Liu Xia is unable to meet the media freely for the time being, Pan said.
Photo: Liu Xia
The joint exhibition by Liu Xia and Tsai Hai-ru (蔡海如), titled “A Swing of Breath” (呼吸鞦韆), is to take place from March 30 to May 26, with 26 photographs and poems by Liu featured alongside Tsai’s installation art.
Tsai is a Taiwanese artist who, like Liu, has also seen a family member — her father — suffer from political persecition.
Tsai’s father was jailed for more than two decades as a political dissident during the White Terror era.
Liu’s photographs were taken during the three-year period that her husband was jailed at a re-education through labor camp on charges of “disturbing the social order,” the museum said.
Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 for “his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.”
He died of cancer in July 2017 in Shenyang, in China’s Liaoning Province, while serving an 11-year jail sentence for “inciting subversion of state power.”
After her husband’s plight gained international attention, Liu Xia’s photographic works were banned from being exhibited in China and were only shown in private settings or online, Pan said.
Liu Xia was freed and left Beijing, arriving in Berlin on July 10 last year.
Altogether, she spent eight years under house arrest.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS