Liao Hung-hsing (廖鴻興) is as talented a poet as he is an artist. Liao, who hails from Greater Taichung and is an avid reader of books on aesthetic theory, believes in the mantra “painting in poetry, poetry in painting.” His latest solo exhibition, Moon Idling (月蹉跎) at Chini Gallery includes oil paintings of deep blue skies and stormy clouds that certainly reflect this sentiment. The colors are deep-set and highly textured. There seems to be something lurking behind the scenery, though not in an ominous way. Rather, the feeling is simultaneously sad and beautiful, just like a well-written poem.
■ Chini Gallery (采泥藝術), 48, Lane 128 Jingye 1st Rd, Taipei City (台北市敬業一路128巷48號), tel: (02) 7729-5809. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10:30am to 7pm
■ Until Jan. 18
Photo courtesy of Lin & Lin Gallery
We’ve heard the spiel on globalization — people are traveling more and embracing new cultures, and that we’re becoming more liberal and open-minded as a result. While this upbeat upper-middle class narrative has elements of truth, there is also a darker side. Nomad in Times (遷徙中) is an exhibition at Taipei Contemporary Art Center composed of artwork produced by artists from different countries, all of which explore the more negative effects of globalization — especially urbanization — on the poor. From Asia to Europe to the US, the paintings and videos depict the lived experiences of society’s “dregs” — those driven out of their homes by economic downtown and political suppression. One of the participants is Kao Jun-Honn (高俊宏), a Taipei-born artist whose charcoal drawings of sullen-looking, unnamed farmers and miners are frequently exhibited in abandoned buildings. Also on display are the haunting, black-and-white photographs of undocumented migrants and morphine addicts taken by Indian photographer Pablo Bartholomew.
■ Taipei Contemporary Art Center (台北當代藝術中心), 19-1, Andong St, Taipei City (台北市安東街19-1號), tel: (02) 2731-5556. Open Wednesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 7pm
■ Until Jan. 18
Photo courtesy of Galleria H
Witnesses (見證者) is a solo exhibition at Taipei Artist Village by Yang Tzu-hung (楊子弘) which draws inspiration from two seemingly disparate experiences in the artist’s life last year: being stuck in a snow storm while working abroad in Japan and participating in the occupation of the Executive Yuan during the Sunflower movement. What binds the two are feelings of loneliness and uncertainty, as well as the fact that both instances would not have been recorded in history had there not been witnesses. While his previous work with found objects, notably bathroom appliances, are abstract in nature, Witnesses is more blunt — red paint drips from the Taiwanese flag into a candle vigil.
■ 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), tel: (02) 3393-7377. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 9pm
■ Until Feb. 1
Photo courtesy of Mind Set Art Center
When Filipina artist Marina Cruz stumbled upon her mother’s old and tattered baptismal dress, she felt a need to “preserve” its timeless beauty through art. Cruz does not leave out a single detail in her oil paintings of old baby dresses from her mother and her aunt — every stain, tear and thread is painted delicately and meticulously. Cruz has also been an outspoken advocate for child adoption and speaks frequently about the fulfillment she derives from raising a family. Although the female artist creating art about motherhood and babies might seem like a trite trope, Cruz’s paintings are enchanting nonetheless. They are on display in her solo exhibition Wear and Tear (時光轉衣) at Taipei’s Mind Set Art Center.
■ Mind Set Art Center (安卓藝術), 16-1, Xinsheng S Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市新生南路三段16-1號), tel: (02) 2365-6008. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 2pm to 6pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Feb. 7
Taipei-born artist Huang Chia-ning (黃嘉寧), whose realistic close-up paintings of flowers, bells, ripples in ponds and other small, dainty objects has caught the eyes of many art critics. Her latest solo exhibition, Presenting(s) (在場), is currently on view at Lin & Lin Gallery. Huang’s paintings attempt to capture the fleeting nature of so many of life’s pleasures — for instance, a flower may be beautiful, but it only has a short lifespan. If it’s captured in a painting however, its beauty may be remembered forever. In a time when more young artists are turning to new medium and feminists are pushing hard for sexual expression, Huang’s realistic paintings of beautiful flowers are feminine and delectable in their own way.
■ 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
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Feb. 8
Curated by Japanese-Taiwanese artist Nobuo Takamori, I Don’t Belong (我不屬於) is a joint exhibition at Taipei’s Galleria H by female artists from around Asia. It explores concepts of identity and belonging in the modern world through the lens of race and gender. Korean-Japanese artist Kim In-sook’s depicts young girls in traditional Korean hanboks wandering around traditional Japanese rooms with tatami mats !X a testament to the artist’s own dilemma of being stuck in between two cultures. Inspired by Malaysia’s multiculturalism, Malaysian-Chinese artist Au Sow-yee (區秀詒) uses storytelling and video to document life in an imaginary island utopia somewhere in Southeast Asia in which different races peacefully coexist. Also on display is Bangladeshi artist Tayeba Begum Lipi’s video, I Wed Myself in which she dresses up as both a bride and groom and superimposes the images such that she “weds” herself. Lipi does this not just to blur gender roles, but also as a statement to express that we are all simply human and that categories like male and female are as much social constructs as they are biological.
■ Galleria H (恆畫廊), 12, Ln 58, Xinsheng S Rd, Taipei City (台北市新生南路一段58巷12-1號), tel: (02) 3322-2553. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 7pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Feb. 15
The Mind of an Adherent (遺民之懷) commemorates the 50th anniversary of the death of Beijing-born painter and calligrapher Pu Xin-yu (溥心畬), who also happened to be the cousin of the last emperor of China, Puyi (溥儀). Fleeing to Taiwan with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) after the Chinese Civil War, Pu lived in Linyi Street (臨沂街) where he sold his paintings of landscapes, nature scenes and Japanese-style homes. Pu’s works were first exhibited at the National Museum of History in 1959, so it’s fitting that the current exhibition is being held there again.
■ National Museum of History, 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 March 22
Common sense is not that common: a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania concludes the concept is “somewhat illusory.” Researchers collected statements from various sources that had been described as “common sense” and put them to test subjects. The mixed bag of results suggested there was “little evidence that more than a small fraction of beliefs is common to more than a small fraction of people.” It’s no surprise that there are few universally shared notions of what stands to reason. People took a horse worming drug to cure COVID! They think low-traffic neighborhoods are a communist plot and call
It is barely 10am and the queue outside Onigiri Bongo already stretches around the block. Some of the 30 or so early-bird diners sit on stools, sipping green tea and poring over laminated menus. Further back it is standing-room only. “It’s always like this,” says Yumiko Ukon, who has run this modest rice ball shop and restaurant in the Otsuka neighbourhood of Tokyo for almost half a century. “But we never run out of rice,” she adds, seated in her office near a wall clock in the shape of a rice ball with a bite taken out. Bongo, opened in 1960 by
Over the years, whole libraries of pro-People’s Republic of China (PRC) texts have been issued by commentators on “the Taiwan problem,” or the PRC’s desire to annex Taiwan. These documents have a number of features in common. They isolate Taiwan from other areas and issues of PRC expansion. They blame Taiwan’s rhetoric or behavior for PRC actions, particularly pro-Taiwan leadership and behavior. They present the brutal authoritarian state across the Taiwan Strait as conciliatory and rational. Even their historical frames are PRC propaganda. All of this, and more, colors the latest “analysis” and recommendations from the International Crisis Group, “The Widening
From a nadir following the 2020 national elections, two successive chairs of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) and Eric Chu (朱立倫), tried to reform and reinvigorate the old-fashioned Leninist-structured party to revive their fortunes electorally. As examined in “Donovan’s Deep Dives: How Eric Chu revived the KMT,” Chu in particular made some savvy moves that made the party viable electorally again, if not to their full powerhouse status prior to the 2014 Sunflower movement. However, while Chu has made some progress, there remain two truly enormous problems facing the KMT: the party is in financial ruin and
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