Let’s Get Married! (我們結婚吧!) is an endearing show with a strong exhortatory message likely aimed at boosting Taiwan’s marriage rate. Through black-and-white family photographs, interviews and color images from a second “wedding photography” session, the exhibition tells the story of 38 married couples from Yunlin’s Douliou City (斗六) and of their lives in the 20th-century.
■ Futai Street Mansion (撫臺街洋樓), 26 Yanping S Rd, Taipei City (臺北市延平南路26號), tel: (02) 2314-8080 ext. 21. Open Mondays to Saturdays from 10am to 6pm. Free admission
■ Until Jan. 31
Photo courtesy of Michael Ku Gallery
In Unfinished Journey (未竟之途), Hsu Wei-hui (徐薇蕙) presents her experience of modern womanhood as a choose-your-own-adventure. Visitors enter via Unfinished Road (未竟之路), a corridor of broken asphalt that forks into two rooms: one dimly lit and thematically dark, the other bright and both containing sculptures made with commercial facial masks and mirrors. Hsu received her MA in painting from Savannah College of Art and Design and and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. This program includes an artist’s talk on Sunday from 3pm to 4:30pm.
■ MOCA Studio at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei), 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號), tel: (02) 2552-3720. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Free admission
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Jan. 18
Photo courtesy of MOCA, Taipei
Art Feast (買得起 藝術博覽會) is a mini art fair of oil paintings, traditional ink paintings, photography, sculpture and installation by top Taiwanese artists. Organized by the Chinese Art Manage International Commerce Association (中華藝術經紀國際交流協會), the fair seeks to promote the local collector’s market with pieces priced at an average of NT$70,000 and as low as NT$3,500. The show ends Sunday with an auction at 6:30pm. For more information, visit www.aaftw.org.tw
■ Sogoart Gallery at F1, 162, Jianguo S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市建國南路一段162號一樓), tel: (02) 2711-3577. Open Mondays to Fridays from 10am to 8pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 11am to 8pm
■ Until Sunday
Chen Sung-chih (陳松志) makes delicate sculptures with socks and other objects found around the house, on view now at Another Place (別境). With this unassuming assortment, Chen builds an alternate realm that’s comforting and hypnotic. “If life is like a soap opera, Another Place is then a simple and ordinary script based on life, and the people on this distorted stage are induced to repeatedly recount intertwining everyday words of fiction and reality,” he writes in the gallery notes.
■ Project Fulfill Art Space (就在藝術空間), 2, Alley 45, Ln 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷45弄2號), tel: (02) 2707-6942. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 6pm
■ Opening reception tomorrow at 4pm. Until Jan. 17
Chinese artist Kuang Jun (匡峻) displays sculptures in a state of collapse at Decorative Metaphor — Atonement (裝飾中的修辭 — 贖罪), his first solo show in Taiwan. Kuang uses charred door frames, shattered glass and iron gratings detached from houses of China’s early Communist period — materials that are reassembled into crude stainless windows and figurines meant as emblems of a re-emerging consciousness.
■ Michael Ku Gallery (谷公館), 4F-2, 21, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段21號4樓之2), tel: (02) 2577-5601. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Opening reception at 3pm. Until Feb. 8
All in a Knowing Smile (拈花自在) is a retrospective of contemporary jade jewelry by Penny Wang (王佩南), a leading figure in today’s industry. The traditional jade ornament, historically worn as an expression of religious or moral qualities, is facing the challenge of a diminishing mainstream appeal. With edgy lines and visually ornate construction, Wang interprets unusual motifs like owls, turning the jade ornament of antiquity into quirky statement pieces.
■ National Museum of History (國立歷史博物館), 49 Nanhai Rd, Taipei City (台北市南海路49號), tel: (02) 2361-0270. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. General admission: NT$30
■ Until Jan. 18
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
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
When 17-year-old Lin Shih (林石) crossed the Taiwan Strait in 1746 with a group of settlers, he could hardly have known the magnitude of wealth and influence his family would later amass on the island, or that one day tourists would be walking through the home of his descendants in central Taiwan. He might also have been surprised to see the family home located in Wufeng District (霧峰) of Taichung, as Lin initially settled further north in what is now Dali District (大里). However, after the Qing executed him for his alleged participation in the Lin Shuang-Wen Rebellion (林爽文事件), his grandsons were
I am kneeling quite awkwardly on a cushion in a yoga studio in London’s Shoreditch on an unseasonably chilly Wednesday and wondering when exactly will be the optimum time to rearrange my legs. I have an ice-cold mango and passion fruit kombucha beside me and an agonising case of pins and needles. The solution to pins and needles, I learned a few years ago, is to directly confront the agony: pull your legs out from underneath you, bend your toes up as high as they can reach, and yes, it will hurt far more initially, but then the pain subsides.
RSS