Homunculus (人造人) is a group exhibit by seven artists who employ painting as a medium to contemplate the changes in how people are depicted in the age of digital media.
■ A Gallery (一畫廊), 22, Alley 36, Ln 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷36弄22號). Open Mondays to Saturdays from 1pm to 9pm. Tel (02) 2702-3327
■ Until May 30
Painter Lu Hsien-ming (陸先銘) deconstructs the colors and shapes of contemporary city life with Urban Memoir (城市隨筆). Whereas Lu’s earlier work focused on monumental constructions such as overpasses or skyscrapers — as well as the machines: tractors, cement trucks and steamrollers that help give shape to a city — this series adds the people, rendered in a hyper-realist style, who inhabit and construct these environments.
■ Lin & Lin Gallery (大未來林舍畫廊), 13, Ln 252, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段252巷13號). Open Tuesdays to Fridays from 10am to 7pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 11am to 7pm. Tel: (02) 2721-8488
■ Until May 30
Sakshi Gallery celebrates its first anniversary with an exhibition showcasing contemporary art from India by artists born between 1950 and 1980 and working in painting and installation. Ranbir Singh Kaleka’s realist paintings depict objects in perplexing tableaus that border on the surreal. Rekha Rodwittiyaj’s large-scale paintings of women resemble the thematic concerns of Gauguin portrayed with bold coloring and outlines reminiscent of Matisse. Sunil Gawde explores perception and reality through multimedia installations. Hema Upadhyay combines self-portraits with exotic patterns. Other artists include sculptor Jitish Kallat, whose is represented by Saatchi Gallery, and the artistic duo Thukral & Tagra, who work in video, sculpture and painting.
■ Sakshi Gallery (夏可喜當代藝術), 33 Yitong Street, Taipei City (台北市伊通街33號). Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1:30pm to 9:30pm, Sundays from 1:30pm to 7:30pm. Tel: (02) 2516-5386
■ Until May 30
While Sakshi celebrates its first anniversary, Cathay United Art Center is holding a 10th Anniversary Exhibition. The group show brings together 25 emerging artists working in different genres of oil painting — realism, impressionism and abstract expressionism — and sculpture, particularly the female form.
■ Cathay United Art Center (國泰世華藝術中心), 7F, 236 Dunhua N Rd, Taipei City (台北市敦化北路236號7樓). Open Mondays to Saturdays from 10am to 6pm. Tel: (02) 2717-0988
■ Until June 12
Contemporary artist Emily Yang (楊世芝) continues her examination of abstract painting informed by Chinese calligraphy and landscape with Disorderly in Order (斷變之間). Expanding on themes developed in her 2007 show, Unconventional Strokes (筆墨可以橫著走), Yang seeks to build her frenetic paintings around a simple line.
■ IT Park Gallery (伊通公園), 2F-3F, 41 Yitong St, Taipei City (台北市伊通街41號2-3樓). Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1pm to 10pm.
Tel: (02) 2507-7243
■ Until June 5
Travel Forever brings together four contemporary Japanese photographers who document their travels both at home and abroad. Naoki Honjo captures cities from a bird’s-eye perspective while Akiko Ikeda focuses in on minute details — strangers, birds and mailboxes — that she encounters on her travels, which she then folds into three-dimensional objects. Naoya Okazaki offers a bizarre perspective on Japan’s iconic Mount Fuji, while Hiroshi Ono’s photos of Amsterdam offer a humorous look at the city.
■ Aki Gallery (也趣), 141 Minzu W Rd, Taipei City (台北市民族西路141號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 6:30pm. Tel: (02) 2599-1171
■ Until May 30
This is the final week of Gold and Glory: The Wonders of Khitan From the Inner Mongolian Museum Collection (黃金旺族:內蒙古博物院大遼文物展), a special exhibit at the National Palace Museum that presents intricately carved artifacts, many made from silver and gold, from the Khitan, a tribe of nomads that virtually disappeared around the 13th century. [A review of the show can be found on Page 15 of the Feb. 10, 2010, edition of the Taipei Times.]
■ National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院), 221, Zhishan Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市至善路二段221號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm, open until 8:30pm on Saturdays. Tel: (02) 2881-2021. Admission: NT$250 (free admission for children under 115cm)
■ Until Sunday
The term “pirates” as used in Asia was a European term that, as scholar of Asian pirate history Robert J. Antony has observed, became globalized during the European colonial era. Indeed, European colonial administrators often contemptuously dismissed entire Asian peoples or polities as “pirates,” a term that in practice meant raiders not sanctioned by any European state. For example, an image of the American punitive action against the indigenous people in 1867 was styled in Harper’s Weekly as “Attack of United States Marines and Sailors on the pirates of the island of Formosa, East Indies.” The status of such raiders in
On paper, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) enters this year’s nine-in-one elections with almost nowhere to go but up. Yet, there are fears in the pan-green camp that they may not do much better then they did in 2022. Though the DPP did somewhat better at the city and county councillor level in 2022, at the “big six” municipality mayoral and county commissioner level, it was a disaster for the party. Then-president and party chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) made a string of serious strategic miscalculations that led to the party’s worst-ever result at the top executive level. That year, the party
Feb. 9 to Feb.15 Growing up in the 1980s, Pan Wen-li (潘文立) was repeatedly told in elementary school that his family could not have originated in Taipei. At the time, there was a lack of understanding of Pingpu (plains Indigenous) peoples, who had mostly assimilated to Han-Taiwanese society and had no official recognition. Students were required to list their ancestral homes then, and when Pan wrote “Taipei,” his teacher rejected it as impossible. His father, an elder of the Ketagalan-founded Independence Presbyterian Church in Xinbeitou (自立長老會新北投教會), insisted that their family had always lived in the area. But under postwar
As much as I’m a mountain person, I have to admit that the ocean has a singular power to clear my head. The rhythmic push and pull of the waves is profoundly restorative. I’ve found that fixing my gaze on the horizon quickly shifts my mental gearbox into neutral. I’m not alone in savoring this kind of natural therapy, of course. Several locations along Taiwan’s coast — Shalun Beach (沙崙海水浴場) near Tamsui and Cisingtan (七星潭) in Hualien are two of the most famous — regularly draw crowds of sightseers. If you want to contemplate the vastness of the ocean in true
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