Chinese contemporary artist Zhang Huan
(張洹) garnered an early reputation as somewhat of an enfant terrible of Beijing’s art world. In his breakout 12 Square Meters he examined the tortures of existence by smearing his naked body with fish oil and honey after which he sat for an hour in a
bug-infested latrine. The 1995 To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain (為無名山增高一米) consisted of 10 naked bodies piled on the summit of Miaofengshan (妙峰山) west of Beijing, with nine artists later the same day simulating intercourse with a nearby peak.
Videos of these performance works are currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, and form part of a retrospective of Zhang’s oeuvre under the title Amitoufo (阿彌陀佛). The show provides a solid overview of the artist’s career, from his early existential investigations and social critiques to his later Buddhist-inspired sculptures and ash on linen paintings.
Trained as an oil painter at Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, Zhang became disenchanted by the limitations of the medium and began experimenting with performance art. At this time, Zhang and other like-minded Chinese artists established the Beijing East Village, which enabled
the burgeoning artist to explore his new direction.
But audiences and critics generally met his penchant to perform naked with bafflement or derision, so in 1998 Zhang moved to New York, an environment more amenable to his performance art.
Two videos at MOCA are representative of his New York period. The 1998 Pilgrimage — Wind and Water in New York (朝拜–紐約風水) shows a naked Zhang lying face down on a Ming-style bed that is covered with thick blocks of ice, while My America (Hard to Assimilate) (我的美國) features a naked Zhang sitting on a stool as 60 volunteers, also naked, pelt him with loaves of bread.
The videos suggest the isolation of recent immigrants to New York and subtly poke fun at the city’s (and America’s) multicultural presumptions.
Zhang returned to China and opened a studio in Shanghai in 2006. It was at this time that he became a practicing Buddhist — a spiritual transformation that has informed his work ever since.
Amitoufo’s curator, Yang Shin-Yi (楊心一), does a superb job of showing this remarkable change by juxtaposing Zhang’s revelatory performance videos with his religiously inspired sculptures.
Buddhist influences are manifest in the hanging leather sculpture Cowskin Buddha Face No. 4 (牛皮佛臉4號). The hide is shaped to form the face of Buddha and hints at the inseparable relationship between animal and human, flesh and spirit.
A more general examination of China’s religious heritage can be found in Chinese Civilian & Chinese Warrior (文化部長和國防部長). The 5m-tall sculptures of the gods of literature and war are embedded with Buddhist relics, offering dishes and unburned incense sticks, invoking the ritualistic aspects of religion and its appearance in Zhang’s artistic practice.
There is much else to see in Amitoufo: The 11 ash paintings that examine China’s history from the Republican period until 1970 offer an interesting statement about the country’s public memory and future. But the value of the exhibit lies in the curator’s ability to demonstrate how Zhang channeled the existential angst of his early performance art into the transcendent calmness of his later paintings and sculptures.
Oct. 27 to Nov. 2 Over a breakfast of soymilk and fried dough costing less than NT$400, seven officials and engineers agreed on a NT$400 million plan — unaware that it would mark the beginning of Taiwan’s semiconductor empire. It was a cold February morning in 1974. Gathered at the unassuming shop were Economics minister Sun Yun-hsuan (孫運璿), director-general of Transportation and Communications Kao Yu-shu (高玉樹), Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) president Wang Chao-chen (王兆振), Telecommunications Laboratories director Kang Pao-huang (康寶煌), Executive Yuan secretary-general Fei Hua (費驊), director-general of Telecommunications Fang Hsien-chi (方賢齊) and Radio Corporation of America (RCA) Laboratories director Pan
President William Lai (賴清德) has championed Taiwan as an “AI Island” — an artificial intelligence (AI) hub powering the global tech economy. But without major shifts in talent, funding and strategic direction, this vision risks becoming a static fortress: indispensable, yet immobile and vulnerable. It’s time to reframe Taiwan’s ambition. Time to move from a resource-rich AI island to an AI Armada. Why change metaphors? Because choosing the right metaphor shapes both understanding and strategy. The “AI Island” frames our national ambition as a static fortress that, while valuable, is still vulnerable and reactive. Shifting our metaphor to an “AI Armada”
The older you get, and the more obsessed with your health, the more it feels as if life comes down to numbers: how many more years you can expect; your lean body mass; your percentage of visceral fat; how dense your bones are; how many kilos you can squat; how long you can deadhang; how often you still do it; your levels of LDL and HDL cholesterol; your resting heart rate; your overnight blood oxygen level; how quickly you can run; how many steps you do in a day; how many hours you sleep; how fast you are shrinking; how
“‘Medicine and civilization’ were two of the main themes that the Japanese colonial government repeatedly used to persuade Taiwanese to accept colonization,” wrote academic Liu Shi-yung (劉士永) in a chapter on public health under the Japanese. The new government led by Goto Shimpei viewed Taiwan and the Taiwanese as unsanitary, sources of infection and disease, in need of a civilized hand. Taiwan’s location in the tropics was emphasized, making it an exotic site distant from Japan, requiring the introduction of modern ideas of governance and disease control. The Japanese made great progress in battling disease. Malaria was reduced. Dengue was
RSS