The first time Australian curator Annie Ivanova was invited to Taiwan six years ago to be a guest curator at Art Taipei, the annual art fair showcasing works by Taiwanese and international artists, she declined the invitation.
“I turned them down several times,” she says. “I’m busy. Where’s Taipei? What’s Taipei? But they really insisted and I came.”
It’s been a long and fruitful love affair with the country since then, as she became increasingly involved with the local art and design scene, including extensive work with various Aboriginal communities. Earlier this month, as the first resident curator of Home Hotel in Taipei’s Da-an District (大安), Ivanova headed downstairs to the lobby from her suite on the 15th floor for the launch of her book, Taiwan by Design, the first comprehensive English-language book about Taiwanese product design.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
It took Ivanova nearly three years to research, write and crowdfund the NT$1.2 million in publication funds, the result of which features 88 products, each focusing on the designer’s personal story and creative process rather than just talking about the product itself.
The book also provides an overview of Taiwanese design history, including European, Chinese, Japanese and Aboriginal influences up to the digital era.
Ivanova says that the initial challenge was finding original designs, as companies often hire famous foreigner designers to brainstorm ideas. While it is Taiwanese designers who complete the project, it is marketed using the foreign designer’s name.
Photo Courtesy of Annie Ivanova
“The focus of the book was to say that Taiwanese designers are very smart and clever and we should be proud of them instead of outsourcing talent from overseas,” she says.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
When Ivanova first landed in Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport in 2010, she was not impressed by the drab buildings and the under-construction highway en route to Taipei.
“It was so hot and dusty, just concrete and concrete and concrete. I was thinking, ‘What am I doing here? Why did I accept this?’” she says. “But because I’m a curator, I don’t just look at the surface. I go very deep into the roots of why things are. And I met some very interesting people.”
A year later, Ivanova was in Taipei again for the International Design Alliance Congress. This time, she received a commemorative “Trip View Bowl,” a blue-and-white porcelain with intricate aerial panoramic views of Taipei cityscapes painted inside.
“My fascination [with Taiwan design] started with this bowl,” she says. “I told myself I needed to make more connections with the design circle here.”
Ivanova started introducing Taiwanese designers to Australia through her work curating design exhibits at major design festivals. Later, she traveled to various Aboriginal communities, collecting various art and design crafts.
Overall, she found the creative community of Taiwan to be quite dynamic. She believes that part of it has to do with the country’s “convenience culture,” which includes easy access to manufacturing and engineering and extends to transportation and connectivity to the Internet — which is quite different from Australia.
“When people choose convenience as a lifestyle, they’re quite eager to experiment and explore so many new possibilities,” she says.
“When you work with people so engaged with their creative practices who feel so passionate about having a voice as Taiwanese, you want to be proud of that and want to be the connector between this place and the outside world,” she adds.
But with each exhibition, she could only invite one or two designers from Taiwan.
“I thought that was a slow process,” she says. “We need to write a book, so we can introduce 100.”
REAL STORIES
The project grew and started taking longer than Ivanova had expected, but she could not give up because she says Taiwanese designers told her they really needed her to help present them to the international community in way that told the real stories behind the product instead of the usual glossy marketing package.
Ivanova stood firm with her quest for authenticity, personally visiting 350 design companies and studios around the country in two years.
“I did not want any marketing statements or branding information, anything that a marketing department concocted,” Ivanova says. “I made it a rule that I would speak directly to the designers.”
It was not easy to gather the stories behind the inspiration, the perseverance, the crazy ideas that come out of nowhere that lead to an amazing product.
“Language is a problem,” Ivanova says. “Many designers did not speak English. How do we discuss profound ideas when we can’t even have a normal conversation?”
She says she found more trouble communicating with men but usually they had wives or girlfriends who spoke decent English, whom she gives special thanks to in the book. Others were either shy or apprehensive to talking to a foreign woman, she says.
Other than that, it was just keeping things casual and not forcing things, often making several visits to break the cultural barrier.
“I’m a professional curator and I understand the creative process,” she says. “Even if they draw me a picture, I can know the intention or meaning behind the product. It’s translating not just in language, but the creative process and the motivation.”
HOME AT THE HOME HOTEL
The Home Hotel, which incorporates many Aboriginal design elements, found Ivanova through her book and asked her to come stay in the hotel for two months to curate various events and activities.
After being mostly on the road or crashing with a friend during her visits to Taiwan, Ivanova feels that she finally has a home here, for now.
After the book launch, events in the works include a fashion show featuring Aboriginal designers, a pop-up store introducing some of the designers, products featured in the book, and more.
“To work and also be looking for a home in Taipei is hard,” she says. “And now I have a beautiful home at the Home Hotel.”
Depending on who you talk to, beach cleanups are valuable opportunities to build environmental awareness, or well-intentioned yet Sisyphean attempts to reduce ocean pollution. There are also cynics who dismiss such events as nothing better than backdrops against which virtue-signaling millennials can take selfies. Ryan Hevern is in no doubt where he stands. “We can’t clean it all up, and there’ll be trash there again tomorrow. We know that, we aren’t naive. But if we can help people become more mindful, so they make minor adjustments to their everyday routine, we’ll have a more positive impact on the planet,” he says.
A weekend getaway where you can escape the summer heat, commune with nature among trees that sprouted before the time of Christ or enjoy landscaped gardens and comfortable accommodations is within easy reach of northern Taiwan. Experience a traditional garden with Chinese and Japanese influences, birdwatching, ecological tours of old-growth cypress forest and one of Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) namesake villas set among orchards with a beautiful view of the Lanyang River (蘭陽溪) valley, all in the Makauy Ecological Park (馬告生態園區). The Northern Cross-Island Highway connects Taoyuan and Yilan counties, passing through misty conifer forests as it climbs over the Snow Mountain
May 16 to May 22 Lin Wen-cha (林文察) and his “Taiwanese braves” (台灣勇) arrived in Fujian Province’s Jianyang District (建陽) on May 19, 1859, eager for their first action outside of Taiwan. The target was local bandit Guo Wanzong (郭萬淙), one of several ruffians who had taken advantage of ongoing Taiping Rebellion to establish strongholds in the area. A strongman leader of the notable Wufeng Lin Family (霧峰林家), Lin had impressed Qing Dynasty rulers five years earlier by helping expel the remnants of Small Knife Society (小刀會) rebels from Keelung. Lin’s forces routed Guo’s gang in just 11 days, earning a formal
“Long as I remember, the rain’s been coming down,” the song says. The last couple of weeks of wet certainly make it feel that way. The global media has recently observed the change of hitting a 1.5 Celsius degree rise in average temperatures in the next five years has risen to 50 percent. As many scientists have observed, once that level of warming is hit, the planet will reach a slew of tipping points. 1.5C is thus a major threshold. Nature has been sending us ever more urgent distress signals: murderous heatwaves across the Indian subcontinent, giant sandstorms in Iraq, collapsing
RSS