Joy Luck’s Mirror Garden (喬‧伊拉克希的鏡花園) is a Taiwanese artistic rendition of Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club. The premise of the joint exhibition that includes Dong Fang-lan (董芳蘭), Yang Pi (楊碧), Hesper Lang (郎亞玲), Cloudy Lin (林小雲), Cecilia Yen (顏司音), Tsai Hai-ju (蔡海如) and Teresa Shih (施又熙) revolves around the lives of second-generation family friends whose parents suffered during Taiwan’s period of Martial Law, also known as the White Terror. Utilizing visual arts, theatrical dance and archival literature, the exhibition not only explores relationships between female friends and mothers and daughters, but also between the family and the state. By doing so, it delves into an artistic world which was once subverted.
■ Frees Art Space (福利社), B1, 82, Xinsheng N Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市新生北路三段82號B1); tel: (02) 2585-7600. Open Tuesdays to Fridays from 11am to 7pm, Saturdays 1:30pm to 9pm, closed Sundays and Mondays
■ Until Jan. 10
Photo courtesy of Frees Artspace
Lin & Lin Gallery is currently showcasing the works of the late Guangzhou-born, Los Angeles-raised Chinese-American artist George Chann (陳蔭羆) in an exhibition entitled George Chann (陳蔭羆). In a career that spanned the 1940s to the 1990s, Chann was most well-known for using Chinese calligraphic characters as the base for his abstract paintings. In his earlier work, he addressed social issues such as poverty in Los Angeles along with cultural issues like his Chinese identity. In the 1940s, he painted scenes from Chinatown using melancholic but lively hues of blue, as well as grotesque-looking people with sunken, war-torn eyes. Although his later works were more purely abstract, there’s still a sense of the same sorts of intricacies with laced lines created by Chann’s signature frenzied brushstrokes.
■ Lin & Lin Gallery (大未來林舍畫廊), 16 Dongfeng St, Taipei City (台北市東豐街16號), tel: (02) 2700-6866. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until Jan. 4
Photo courtesy of tamtamArt Taipei
Tina Keng Gallery currently has an exhibition on the work of Chinese artist Su Xiaobai (蘇笑柏). Su is known for his sculptural-like paintings which blend Western abstract art with the rigor and refinement of traditional Chinese painting techniques. His solo exhibition Xiaobai Su: 2012-2014 (蘇笑柏: 2012-2014) at displays his lacquer paintings over linen and wood objects. The act is symbolic of creating new memories of the homeland. Su also toys with the viewer’s mind, leaving them pondering about concepts of space and dimension since his work shifts between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional.
■ Tina Keng Gallery (耿畫廊), 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號), tel: (02) 2659-0798. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 7pm
■ Until Feb. 15
Photo courtesy of Trustees of the British Museum
Silent Audacity (沉默果敢) is Japanese artist Sayaka Ohata’s first solo exhibition in Taipei. Held at the hipster-bohemian military residence-turned-artist village, Treasure Hill, the exhibition explores “a silent inner force that stimulates our imagination to act” — according to the gallery notes. Ohata doesn’t have a preferred choice of medium. Instead, she utilizes a wide range, from paintings to videos and installations, to create an overall sense of imagined space. The result is simultaneously reflective and haunting. Ohata is a self-identifying “international artist” and is based in Tokyo and Paris.
■ Treasure Hill Artist Village’s (寶藏巖國際藝術村) CrossGallery (十字藝廊), 2, Alley 14, Ln 230, Dingzhou Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市汀州路三段230巷14弄2號), tel: (02) 2364-5313. Open Tuesday to Sundays from 11am to 6pm, closed Mondays and Wednesdays
■ Until Jan. 14
While Ohata’s exhibition at Treasure Hill is about hashing out resolute silence, South Korean artistsAn Jung-ju and Jun So-jung are always experimenting with new and subdued ways of incorporating sound into their video art. The title of their latest exhibition, Why does the wind blow whenever we remember loved ones? (為何每當我們憶起心所愛的，眼底總是一陣風吹沙?), is derived from the 1995 Serbian film Underground. The film is about two friends wandering through war-torn former Yugoslavia, from World War II to the country’s disintegration in 1992. Likewise, An and Jun’s work is as much a visual and audio record of their own artistic journey as a duo as it is an exploration of the concept of individuality in modern day-to-day life. Their exhibition is divided into two parts, with videos being screened at TheCube Project Space and sound at tamtamArt Taipei.
■ Part 1 (video) at TheCube Project Space (立方計畫空間), 2F, 13, Alley 1, Ln 136, Roosevelt Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路四段136巷1弄13號2樓), tel: (02) 2368-9418. Open Wednesdays through Sundays from 2pm to 8pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until March 8
■ Part 2 (narratives and sound) at tamtamArt Taipei .Ipix, 20-3, Beiping E Rd, Taipei City (台北市北平東路20-3號); Open Thursdays to Fridays from 5pm to 8pm, Saturdays and Sundays 2pm to 7pm
■ Until Jan. 10
The National Palace Museum, in conjunction with London’s British Museum, held their grand opening last week for their latest exhibition, A History of the World in 100 Objects (另眼看世界:大英博物館百品特展). Consisting of a hundred objects from China to Egypt to Mexico, with many discoveries dating back thousands of years, the exhibition is a grand archeological display of different world civilizations. One of the oldest objects to be showcased is the Olduvai stone chopping tool from Tanzania, dating back to nearly two million years. The newest object is a solar-powered lamp kit made in China in 2010. From pots and pans to weaponry and maps, the exhibition highlights the innate human propensity to not only survive, but also thrive through exploration and conquest — all of which is testament to the fact that different world civilizations are in reality, not that different.
■ 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), tel: (02) 2881-2021. Open daily from 9am to 5pm. Regular admission: NT$250
■ Until March 15
Feces, vomit and fossilized food from inside stomachs have provided new clues into how dinosaurs rose to dominate Earth, a new study revealed on Wednesday. Scientists have discovered plenty about dinosaurs — particularly about how they vanished off the face of the planet 66 millions years ago. But “we know very little about their rise,” said Martin Qvarnstrom, a researcher at Sweden’s Uppsala University and the study’s lead author. Dinosaurs first appeared at least 230 million years ago, fossils have shown. But they would not become the world’s dominant animal until the start of the Jurassic Period some 30 million years later. What caused this
The Mountains to Sea National Greenway (山海圳國家綠道) draws its name from the idea that each hiker starting at the summit of Jade Mountain (玉山) and following the trail to the coast is like a single raindrop. Together, many raindrops form life and prosperity-bringing waterways. Replicating a raindrop’s journey holds poetic beauty, but all hikers know that climbing is infinitely more appealing, and so this installment picks up where the last one left off — heading inland and uphill along the 49.8-kilometer Canal Trail (大圳之路) — second of the Greenway’s four sections. A detailed map of the trail can be found
“Bro, I can’t wait for my first dead body,” wrote an 11-year-old boy on Instagram in Sweden, where gangs recruit children too young to be prosecuted as contract killers on chat apps. “Stay motivated, it’ll come,” answered his 19-year-old contact. He went on to offer the child 150,000 kronor (US$13,680) to carry out a murder, as well as clothes and transport to the scene of the crime, according to a police investigation of the exchange last year in the western province of Varmland. In this case, four men aged 18 to 20 are accused of recruiting four minors aged 11 to 17
Dec 2 to Dec 8 It was the biggest heist in Taiwanese history at that time. In the afternoon of Dec. 7, 1982, two masked men armed with M16 assault rifles knocked out the driver of a United World Chinese Commercial Bank (世華銀行) security van, making away with NT$14 million (worth about NT$30 million today). The van had been parked behind a post office at Taipei’s Minsheng E Road when the robbers struck, and despite the post office being full of customers, nobody inside had noticed the brazen theft. “Criminals robbing a
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