American artist Ray King uses light and glass to great effect in Adventures of Light and Color (以光之名). The three glass-and-metal sculptural installations on display at Taipei Artist Village combine visual elements drawn from Chinese history and philosophy and recreate them using contemporary materials.
■ Barry Room, Taipei Artist Village
(台北國際藝術村百里廳), 7 Beiping E Rd, Taipei City (台北市北平東路7號). Open Tuesdays to Fridays from 10am to 6pm. Tel: (02) 3393-7377
■ Opening on Friday from 7pm to 9:30pm. Until July 18
Back to Love (回到愛的星球), a group exhibition of photography, video and installation, examines the lives of people living in African countries. The show puts a positive spin on the lives of these people, offering a compassionate perspective on an underdeveloped continent.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei), 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Tel: (02) 2552-3720. Admission: NT$50
■ Begins on Friday. Until July 25
A new series of wooden sculptures by Hsiao Yi (蕭一) is currently on display at Lin & Lin Gallery. Hsiao’s kitschy representational sculptures of figures praying or riding motorcycles bear an uncanny resemblance to the works of Ju Ming (朱銘) — though without the latter’s depth of vision.
■ 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 July 4
Nature God is a solo exhibition by Chintan Upadhyay, an Indian artist who recently gained attention in Europe for burning cars as an act of defiance against that continent’s legal bureaucracy (apparently it’s okay to burn cars in India) while drawing attention to the world’s reliance on oil. Upadhyay’s Sakshi Gallery show is slightly tamer, featuring collage paintings of naked children that fuse pictorial elements from antiquity with religious iconography.
■ 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 July 11
Hierophany Consciousness (顯聖．意識) is a group exhibition of video and photo installation by six of Taiwan’s top artists. The show explores the country’s history, politics, culture and art. The artists are Huang Ming-che (黃銘哲), J.C. Kuo (郭振昌), Wu Tien-chang (吳天章), Kuo Shu-li (郭淑莉), Pai Tsung-chin (白宗晉) and Lai Hsin-lung (賴新龍).
■ La Chambre Art Gallery (小室藝廊), 31, Ln 52, Siwei Rd, Taipei City (台北市四維路52巷31號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 9pm. Tel: (02) 2700-3689
■ Until July 11
A Decade of Reverie, Tales of Contemplation (織夢十年 靜思物語) is a solo exhibit of 12 oil paintings and eight pastels by Chinese artist Li Lan (朱禮銀). Li Lan’s nostalgic and exotic compositions of insects, women, clothing and architecture are fragments drawn from her daily life and imagination, rendered in rich colors that bring to life multiple worlds.
■ Tina Keng Gallery (大未來耿畫廊),
15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City
(台北市瑞光路548巷15號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 7pm. Tel: (02) 2659-0798
■ Until June 26
Taiwan’s English education system is being pulled apart by three opposing forces. Bilingual Nation 2030 pulls students toward English and global communication. Artificial Intelligence (AI) readiness pulls them toward digital judgment, verification and AI-mediated work. But Taiwan’s old exam culture pulls them back toward memorization, grammar drills, timed reading and correct answers. If the education system keeps using old exams to define success, it risks producing graduates who are neither genuinely bilingual nor genuinely AI-ready, but trained for tasks machines can already perform. The first force is Bilingual Nation 2030. Launched in 2018, the policy aimed to “help Taiwan’s workforce connect
It seems every few days one bumps into one of those “real man” comments in which Taiwan is urged to “face reality” or similar, and “make a deal,” with the speaker implying that soon it will be too late. “Deal” advocates always present themselves as having a superior grip on reality, and the manly ability to make the “hard choice.” Their testosterone-laden language often echoes that of Taiwan sellout advocates. Note that such commentary always specifies a process (“make a deal, work with, make progress”), never the end state of what occupation by a violent authoritarian colonialist state will entail. In
“Taiwan’s Opposition Leader Comes to US With a Message Straight Out of Beijing” read a May 31 headline in the Wall Street Journal. Top US administration officials and members of Congress almost certainly read the WSJ, and if there was a bullet point takeaway that people in Washington should absorb ahead of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) arrival in DC on June 9, that headline is it. The last few columns have discussed this very topic, and the timing is not coincidental. While those top officials likely do not read the Taipei Times, judging by the number
As someone who normally steers clear of books with “transcendence” or “metaphysics” in their subtitles, this reviewer — a casual observer of local belief systems since the 1990s — found Fabian Graham’s Money God Temples in Taiwan a challenging read. Those who’ve only dipped their toes into temple culture will likely need to parse several sections with special care if they’re to keep up with the author, a British ethnographic researcher whose previous books have investigated religious practices among ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia. This scholarly volume examines a facet of Taiwan’s religious landscape that didn’t exist a century ago, and
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