For four years, Taiwanese artist Chen Chun-hao (陳浚豪) has been honing the art of mosquito-nail composition. Using a modified nail gun, he inserts the long slender pins on paintings, grouping them and arranging their height with a pointillist’s precision. His latest works are on view now at Reclaiming the Lost Territories (還我河山). Chen has “reclaimed” classic Chinese ink paintings that fell into political disfavor during the Qing Dynasty, by reproducing them as enormous pin-screen pieces.
■ Tina Keng Gallery (耿畫廊), 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei (台北市瑞光路548巷15號), tel: (02) 2659-0798. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 7pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Jan. 26
Photo courtesy of Eslite Gallery
10 Years in Europe (第一個十年) features photographs taken by Simon Chang (張雍) when he lived in Slovenia, Austria and other parts of Europe between 2003 and 2013. This period was a happy reprieve from Taiwan, where he had “lived as a number, not a name,” Chang writes in the gallery notes, referring to the numbers used to identify conscripts in Taiwan’s army and students in the public-school system. At his solo exhibition, the photographs are numbered and ordered chronologically. Within each frame, Chang has tried to compose an unquantifiable human emotion or condition.
■ Soka Art Center (索卡藝術中心), 2F, 57, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei (台北市敦化南路一段57號2樓), tel: (02) 2570-0390. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 9pm
■ Until Feb. 16
Chen I-hsuen (陳以軒) pulls together a range of media for his first solo show Nessun Dorma ( 你是懂了嘛), a study of person-to-person communication. In an opera work titled Nessun Dorma, Chen sings a famous Italian aria with enough zest to mask its nonsense Chinese-language lyrics, in a reminder that what we say greatly depends on how we say it. For a video work titled I Know, Chen films the faces of friends as he divulges actual secrets about himself. Onscreen, the friends’ rapt focus and other expressions serve as a kind of spiritual pornography that satisfies the viewer’s desire to be understood.
■ Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (關渡美術館), 1 Xueyuan Rd, Taipei (台北市學園路1號), tel: (02) 2893-8870. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 5pm
■ Until Feb. 23
At solo show Dreams for Sale (夢想大拍賣), Benrei Huang (黃本蕊) presents acrylic paintings of a prominently whiskered rabbit named Nini (尼尼). Each work is a colorful picture-story featuring Nini in a familiar situation, be it scheming with dwarf rabbits in Partisanship (政黨生涯) or peering out wistfully by a clock in 9-5 Syndrome (上班族徵候群).
■ Eslite Gallery (誠品畫廊), 5F, 11 Songgao Rd, Taipei (台北市松高路11號5樓), tel: (02) 8789-3388 X1588. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until Jan. 26
At last year’s Venice Biennale, Taiwan’s Vincent J.F. Huang (黃瑞芳) brought his installations to the pavilion of Tuvalu — a Polynesian island nation that named him as their official representative artist. In Taipei, Huang is staging the sequel to his Venice show at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Destiny Intertwined — A Dialogue between Vincent J.F. Huang and Tuvalu (命運‧交織─黃瑞芳與吐瓦魯的對話) brings together works originally shown in Venice, along with recent installations that direct attention to the sea-level rise induced by climate change.
■ MOCA Studio, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei), 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei (台北市長安西路39號), tel: (02) 2552-3720. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm
■ Until Feb. 29
Last week saw the appearance of another odious screed full of lies from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian (肖千), in the Financial Review, a major Australian paper. Xiao’s piece was presented without challenge or caveat. His “Seven truths on why Taiwan always will be China’s” presented a “greatest hits” of the litany of PRC falsehoods. This includes: Taiwan’s indigenous peoples were descended from the people of China 30,000 years ago; a “Chinese” imperial government administrated Taiwan in the 14th century; Koxinga, also known as Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功), “recovered” Taiwan for China; the Qing owned
In Taiwan’s politics the party chair is an extremely influential position. Typically this person is the presumed presidential candidate or serving president. In the last presidential election, two of the three candidates were also leaders of their party. Only one party chair race had been planned for this year, but with the Jan. 1 resignation by the currently indicted Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) two parties are now in play. If a challenger to acting Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) appears we will examine that race in more depth. Currently their election is set for Feb. 15. EXTREMELY
Jan. 20 to Jan. 26 Taipei was in a jubilant, patriotic mood on the morning of Jan. 25, 1954. Flags hung outside shops and residences, people chanted anti-communist slogans and rousing music blared from loudspeakers. The occasion was the arrival of about 14,000 Chinese prisoners from the Korean War, who had elected to head to Taiwan instead of being repatriated to China. The majority landed in Keelung over three days and were paraded through the capital to great fanfare. Air Force planes dropped colorful flyers, one of which read, “You’re back, you’re finally back. You finally overcame the evil communist bandits and
They increasingly own everything from access to space to how we get news on Earth and now outgoing President Joe Biden warns America’s new breed of Donald Trump-allied oligarchs could gobble up US democracy itself. Biden used his farewell speech to the nation to deliver a shockingly dark message: that a nation which has always revered its entrepreneurs may now be at their mercy. “An oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms,” Biden said. He named no names, but his targets were clear: men like Elon Musk
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