Wang Ya-hui (王雅慧) is drawn to the little things in life, and her art always exhibits a childlike attentiveness to the co-existence between the imagined and the experienced. Her daydreams appear in the form of a little fluffy cloud floating through an old house in Visitor (訪客, 2007), or as everyday objects sliding into walls and tables, disappearing and re-emerging somewhere else in Ex-change (2006).
More recently, or on Oct. 16 last year to be exact, a huge rainbow appeared over Taipei. Many of the city’s residents took photographs of it and posted them on their blogs. This collective fascination with a natural phenomenon piqued Wang’s interest and inspired part of her new solo exhibition, Rainbow & Bow, currently on display at the Galerie Grand Siecle.
For When I Look at the Rainbow, Wang collected pictures of the rainbow she found on the Internet and re-arranged them according to a structure whose logic is not immediately apparent to the viewer. Wang leaves a clue on top of each print to help audiences decipher her intentions or form their own conclusions.
“To me, the design is like a secret code. It has its own inner logic in relation to how the photographs are connected. Each photo represents one person’s perspective, and through my combinations [of the images], these photos, which were scattered across the Internet, make a certain connection that is not scientific or rational, but changeable and always in flux,” the 36-year-old artist said.
For Two Billion Light Years of Solitude, Wang shot footage at night of the residential complex where she lives once every one or two minutes for four consecutive hours. In the resulting video, bright, animated lines connect lights when they are switched on in the windows of the buildings. Unlike the more abstract patterns in the Rainbow series, the lines and dots of light recall the constellations, which are also a man-made concept that attempts to impose a sense of order upon the chaos of the universe.
The Archer, a one-channel video work, was the result of Wang’s recent and relatively new experience of living in apartment buildings.
For Wang, the tiny windows of the apartment buildings she sees from her balcony are like mysterious spaces that cannot be discerned or experienced. One day, the image of an archer suddenly appeared in her mind. In The Archer, the athlete stands on Wang’s balcony and aims at the windows in the distance.
“It’s strange to live in an apartment. Your orientation to the ground and other spaces is ambiguous,” Wang explained. “Your relationship with them is casual and contingent.”
March 10 to March 16 Although it failed to become popular, March of the Black Cats (烏貓進行曲) was the first Taiwanese record to have “pop song” printed on the label. Released in March 1929 under Eagle Records, a subsidiary of the Japanese-owned Columbia Records, the Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) lyrics followed the traditional seven characters per verse of Taiwanese opera, but the instrumentation was Western, performed by Eagle’s in-house orchestra. The singer was entertainer Chiu-chan (秋蟾). In fact, a cover of a Xiamen folk song by Chiu-chan released around the same time, Plum Widow Missing Her Husband (雪梅思君), enjoyed more
Last week Elbridge Colby, US President Donald Trump’s nominee for under secretary of defense for policy, a key advisory position, said in his Senate confirmation hearing that Taiwan defense spending should be 10 percent of GDP “at least something in that ballpark, really focused on their defense.” He added: “So we need to properly incentivize them.” Much commentary focused on the 10 percent figure, and rightly so. Colby is not wrong in one respect — Taiwan does need to spend more. But the steady escalation in the proportion of GDP from 3 percent to 5 percent to 10 percent that advocates
A series of dramatic news items dropped last month that shed light on Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attitudes towards three candidates for last year’s presidential election: Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) founder Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), Terry Gou (郭台銘), founder of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), and New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). It also revealed deep blue support for Ko and Gou from inside the KMT, how they interacted with the CCP and alleged election interference involving NT$100 million (US$3.05 million) or more raised by the
More than 100,000 people were killed in a single night 80 years ago yesterday in the US firebombing of Tokyo, the Japanese capital. The attack, made with conventional bombs, destroyed downtown Tokyo and filled the streets with heaps of charred bodies. The damage was comparable to the atomic bombings a few months later in August 1945, but unlike those attacks, the Japanese government has not provided aid to victims and the events of that day have largely been ignored or forgotten. Elderly survivors are making a last-ditch effort to tell their stories and push for financial assistance and recognition. Some are speaking
RSS