Asia’s largest convention dedicated to designer toys opened yesterday and runs until Sunday at Huashan 1914 Creative Park (華山1914). This year, it’s billed as an “exhibition within an exhibition,” a toy show with booths for contemporary art.
Now in its 11th year, Taipei Toy Festival (台北國際玩具創作大展) brings together about 200 designer-toy makers from Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, China and other countries. The toys, also called urban vinyl, are hard figurines that commonly depict cartoons or real-life people.
As its “exhibition within an exhibition,” Taipei Toy Festival is also hosting booths that present sculptures and art in other media. There’s a forum of Taiwanese illustrators, plus a screening of animated shorts by students of the Taiwan National University of Arts Department of Animation.
Photo courtesy of Monster Taipei
“The mixed-media repertoire is still a relatively small part of the festival,” said Rita Shen (沈詩華) of Monster Taipei (台北怪獸), a designer toy importer that coordinates the annual event.
“[But] we wanted to inject the participation of diverse artists into the toy industry,” she said.
The contemporary artists’ roster includes Tsai Meng-da (蔡孟達), a Taiwanese stencil-graffiti artist known as KEA; wood sculptor Moe Nakamura from Tokyo; and Ashley Wood, an Australian comic-book artist and illustrator.
Photo courtesy of Monster Taipei
Many were invited to make custom urban vinyl or other collectible art for the event. Illustrator Cherng Yang (楊承霖) and pop-art studios Second and Rody have collaborated to produce a limited-edition line of toys for the fair.
The designer toy trend emerged in Hong Kong in the 1990s and has since moved through East Asia and westward.
Held since 2004, the Taipei Toy Festival is the industry’s largest event in Asia. Toys at the fair range from NT$200 pieces for the casual collector to rare and one-off items that cost upwards of NT$10,000.
Photo courtesy of Monster Taipei
Urban vinyl caters to a small but growing crowd that wants to own a little piece of pop culture. Last year, Monster Taipei sold roughly 35,000 tickets, Shen said, up from 8,000 at its opening edition in 2004.
This year’s schedule includes live music, workshops, children’s events, a forum on independent marketing and autograph signings by Rody, Cherng, Second, Japanese illustrator Toshitaka Nabata, Kenny Wong (王信明) of Kennysworks and other artists. For a full list, visit www.taipei-toyfestival.com.
Photo courtesy of Monster Taipei
Recently the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and its Mini-Me partner in the legislature, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), have been arguing that construction of chip fabs in the US by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is little more than stripping Taiwan of its assets. For example, KMT Legislative Caucus First Deputy Secretary-General Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) in January said that “This is not ‘reciprocal cooperation’ ... but a substantial hollowing out of our country.” Similarly, former TPP Chair Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) contended it constitutes “selling Taiwan out to the United States.” The two pro-China parties are proposing a bill that
Institutions signalling a fresh beginning and new spirit often adopt new slogans, symbols and marketing materials, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is no exception. Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), soon after taking office as KMT chair, released a new slogan that plays on the party’s acronym: “Kind Mindfulness Team.” The party recently released a graphic prominently featuring the red, white and blue of the flag with a Chinese slogan “establishing peace, blessings and fortune marching forth” (締造和平,幸福前行). One part of the graphic also features two hands in blue and white grasping olive branches in a stylized shape of Taiwan. Bonus points for
March 9 to March 15 “This land produced no horses,” Qing Dynasty envoy Yu Yung-ho (郁永河) observed when he visited Taiwan in 1697. He didn’t mean that there were no horses at all; it was just difficult to transport them across the sea and raise them in the hot and humid climate. “Although 10,000 soldiers were stationed here, the camps had fewer than 1,000 horses,” Yu added. Starting from the Dutch in the 1600s, each foreign regime brought horses to Taiwan. But they remained rare animals, typically only owned by the government or
“M yeolgong jajangmyeon (anti-communism zhajiangmian, 滅共炸醬麵), let’s all shout together — myeolgong!” a chef at a Chinese restaurant in Dongtan, located about 35km south of Seoul, South Korea, calls out before serving a bowl of Korean-style zhajiangmian —black bean noodles. Diners repeat the phrase before tucking in. This political-themed restaurant, named Myeolgong Banjeom (滅共飯館, “anti-communism restaurant”), is operated by a single person and does not take reservations; therefore long queues form regularly outside, and most customers appear sympathetic to its political theme. Photos of conservative public figures hang on the walls, alongside political slogans and poems written in Chinese characters; South
RSS