The term “globalization” has been thrown around haphazardly since the 1990s without much chops to back it up — not everyone can afford to buy a smartphone, let alone travel the world and experience different cultures. Japanese artist Takahiko Suzuki challenges the concept of “globalization” by photographing small neighborhood shops around Taiwan — mostly betel nut stands, seeing as they representative of the working class. These tiny shops don’t have grand advertising schemes and aren’t on social media — rather, hanging a simple sign over their store front will suffice since their customers are mostly from the local community. After photographing these stores, Suzuki prints out the images and converts them into three-dimensional models of the original stores. He then takes these models to other countries where he gets passersby to hold them up so that he can photograph them. That to him seems like a more accurate image of “globalization.” Suzuki’s artwork is currently on display at Taipei’s IT Park Gallery in an exhibition entitled Global-Store Project: feat. 2.5D Betel Nut Kiosk (全球商店計畫：2.5D檳榔攤).
■ IT Park Gallery (伊通公園), 2F-3F, 41 Yitong St, Taipei City (台北市伊通街41號2-3樓). Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1pm to 10pm. Tel: (02) 2507-7243
■ Until July 25
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Design Center
It appears to be a good week for Japanese artists in Taipei. 76-year-old photographer Daido Moriyama usually captures everyday street scenes in Japan, from stray dogs lazing about to children playing outside of ramshackle homes and prostitutes making the rounds at some old haunts. For his latest exhibition, A Room, held at Aura Gallery in Taipei, Moriyama still shows a fascination with what society says is forbidden, but in a different way — through photographing nude women in very suggestive poses. Achieved through his signature black-and-white style, making use of depth and light-dark contrast, these series of photographs thread a fine line between art and pornography. But they still manage to be intense and beautiful. In 2008, Moriyama told Playboy magazine that it was a dream of his to photograph nude women in 8 by 10 frames. Creepy? Just a little. Perhaps there’s good reason that the exhibition is restricted to an 18+ audience only.
■ Aura Gallery Taipei (亦安畫廊台北), 313, Dunhua N Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段313號). Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 12pm to 7pm. Tel: (02) 2752-7002.
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Aug. 1
Photo courtesy of IT Park Gallery
Much of Lin Kuo-wei’s (林國威) work is inspired by his experience being an expat in Paris. Many of his installations fixate around the concept of displacement — the objects he creates may appear to fit in to a particular setting, but upon closer examination, they actually stand out like sore thumbs. As it states on Lin’s Web site, he “endeavors to understand the odd in the ordinary and the insignificant in the monumental.” His latest solo exhibition, Interstice (間隙), which is held at Michael Ku Gallery in Taipei, is aptly titled in the sense that Lin sees himself as occupying the tiny, overlapping space in a Venn diagram in which the two categories are the two cultures he’s tried to immerse himself in.
■ 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
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Aug. 16
Photo courtesy of Michael Ku Gallery
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Japanese product designer Sori Yanagi who helped to shape the modern design industry from post-war Japan to the late twentieth century. Yanagi, whose designs were a blend of minimalist simplicity and bits of inspiration drawn from Japanese tradition, was a fervent believer that true beauty could not be manufactured; but rather, that it was an inherent quality. Ironically, he labored intensively to create his simple but beautiful structures. The Taiwan Design Center at Songshan Cultural and Creative Park is holding a retrospective exhibition for Yanagi. Called Beauty Born, Not Made (美，渾然天成，無法製造), the exhibition includes some of Yanagi’s most famous pieces, including the Butterfly Stool, a two-piece seat that resembles both a butterfly’s wings and the gateway to a Shinto shrine.
■ Taiwan Design Center (台灣創意設計中心), Songshan Cultural and Creative Park (松山文創園區), 133, Guangfu S Rd, Taipei City (台北市光復南路133號), tel: (02) 2745-8199. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm
■ Until Aug. 30
Green Island (綠島) is known for its amazing coastal scenery where vacationers brave either the rickety plane or stomach-churning ferry to get there and do some outdoor activities like snorkeling or hiking. Less known is that the island off the coast of Taitung used to house and execute political prisoners. Tainan’s National Museum of Taiwan History seeks to make this piece of history known to more people through their latest exhibition, Reflections on ‘Burning Island’— Youth in Exile (沉思火燒島— 被流放的青春). Featuring old photographs, sketches, telegrams, letters, film interviews and other documents from the ‘50s and ‘60s, the exhibition unearths the stories of the youth who protested against the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Photographs show that the main work of the prisoners at the New Life Correction Center (新生訓導處) which opened in 1951, was to cut wood and grow crops. Telegrams also indicate that the outcome of some of the trials were predetermined with prisoners being sentenced to death.
■ National Museum of Taiwan History (國立臺灣歷史博物館), 250, Chang-he Rd Sec 1, Tainan City (台南市長和路一段250號), tel: (06) 356-8889. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm
■ Until Nov. 22
Last week, the the National Immigration Agency (NIA) told the legislature that more than 10,000 naturalized Taiwanese citizens from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) risked having their citizenship revoked if they failed to provide proof that they had renounced their Chinese household registration within the next three months. Renunciation is required under the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), as amended in 2004, though it was only a legal requirement after 2000. Prior to that, it had been only an administrative requirement since the Nationality Act (國籍法) was established in
Three big changes have transformed the landscape of Taiwan’s local patronage factions: Increasing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) involvement, rising new factions and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) significantly weakened control. GREEN FACTIONS It is said that “south of the Zhuoshui River (濁水溪), there is no blue-green divide,” meaning that from Yunlin County south there is no difference between KMT and DPP politicians. This is not always true, but there is more than a grain of truth to it. Traditionally, DPP factions are viewed as national entities, with their primary function to secure plum positions in the party and government. This is not unusual
The other day, a friend decided to playfully name our individual roles within the group: planner, emotional support, and so on. I was the fault-finder — or, as she put it, “the grumpy teenager” — who points out problems, but doesn’t suggest alternatives. She was only kidding around, but she struck at an insecurity I have: that I’m unacceptably, intolerably negative. My first instinct is to stress-test ideas for potential flaws. This critical tendency serves me well professionally, and feels true to who I am. If I don’t enjoy a film, for example, I don’t swallow my opinion. But I sometimes worry
US President Donald Trump’s bid to take back control of the Panama Canal has put his counterpart Jose Raul Mulino in a difficult position and revived fears in the Central American country that US military bases will return. After Trump vowed to reclaim the interoceanic waterway from Chinese influence, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed an agreement with the Mulino administration last week for the US to deploy troops in areas adjacent to the canal. For more than two decades, after handing over control of the strategically vital waterway to Panama in 1999 and dismantling the bases that protected it, Washington has
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