If you have entomophobia, or a fear of insects, as I do, you might want to avoid MOCA, Taipei’s latest outdoor installation, Herds of Ants (烏合之眾), by Chinese artist Chen Zhiguang (陳志光). Apparently, the giant-size army of ants made out of iron, are not meant to gross out visitors. For Chen, ants symbolize team work, diligence and perseverance. They struggle to climb to the top of the social order and strive hard to achieve whatever they endeavor to do, but do so in a way that’s very low-profile, without seeking reward. It seems that Chen is suggesting that perhaps we humans should learn to be more like ants.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (台北當代藝術館, 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
■ Until Aug. 15
Photo courtesy of MOCA, Taipei
Liao Yu-an (廖堉安) steers away from his signature patchwork-like paintings of forlorn-looking creatures in his latest solo exhibition, Practice of Temporary Parking (臨停練習), currently on view at Taipei’s IT Park Gallery. His message still revolves around the evils that consumer culture breeds, though here his subject matter appears more random — among them are roads, chickens and a pair of legs. He criticizes the digital revolution for giving rise to the widespread desire for instant gratification. Things like online dating apps and smartphone games have fortified this kind of mentality. And the chickens and pair of legs are obviously meant to symbolize all of this.
■ 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), tel: (02) 2507-7243. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1pm to 10pm
■ Until Aug. 20
Photo courtesy of Masaya Chiba
Austrian expat photographer Michael Geier has a new solo exhibition opening at Hsinchu’s Jiang Shan Yi Gai cafe on Saturday. Gaze Into the Street (溫柔的凝視) is a collection of photographs taken by Geier of the historic Beimen Street (北門街) near the City God Temple (城隍廟). Some of the street’s architecture has remained unchanged since the late Qing dynasty. Lately, there have been protests against construction on Beimen Street and student-led groups have been promoting its preservation as a heritage site. Geier captures this sentiment — the struggle between preserving tradition and wanting to modernize — in his photography in a way that’s pensive yet evocative.
■ Jiang Shan Yi Gai (江山藝改所), 17-4, Jiangshan St, Hsinchu City (新竹市江山街17-4號), tel: (03) 526-6456. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 2pm to 11pm
■ Opens Saturday. Until Aug. 28
Photo courtesy of Teng Chao-ming
Liu Yu’s (劉玗) latest solo exhibition at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, The Ship of Fools Mooring at the Train Station (停泊在車站的愚人船), draws inspiration from a 15th-century German text. The characters in Sebastian Brant’s 1494 novel Ship of Fools are farcical, though each one represents a social ill (it sounds trite now, but perhaps the message was profound for its time). Likewise, Liu’s work is a study on the easily ignored — the homeless, disabled and mentally ill. Liu started following homeless people around the city in 2014, recording her observations. Her artwork focuses on Taipei Main Station, where many of the aforementioned people tend to congregate.
Also on display at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts is Discordant Harmony (失調的和諧), a joint exhibition of artworks exploring the theme of traversing boundaries by artists from Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea. The exhibition posits that “Asia” is primarily a European construct and the continent is instead defined by conflicting interests rather than a sense of a unified culture. It shows that power relations within the continent have shifted dramatically over the last few decades, from Japanese colonialism to the rise of China. Included in the lineup are Taiwanese artists Teng Chao-ming (鄧兆旻) and Chang Wen-hsuan (張紋瑄), as well as Japanese artist Masaya Chiba and South Korean artist Sora Kim.
■ Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (關渡美術館), 1 Xueyuan Rd, Taipei City (台北市學園路1號), tel: (02) 2896-1000 X 2432. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 5pm
Photo courtesy of IT Park Gallery:
■ The Ship of Fools is until Sept. 11. Discordant Harmony is until Sept. 18
Photo courtesy of Michael Geier
Last week, the government rejected a petition to amend the law that would allow permanent residents a path to citizenship. This was widely expected, but it came amid a flurry of negative trends about the future of the nation’s labor force. There was much ironic commentary on the juxtaposition of that decision with its idiotic, abusive reasoning with the urgent demand for labor across a wide range of fields. This demand was highlighted by the government’s plans for five NT$10 billion (US$307.6 million) funds to promote development in key fields, including artificial intelligence (AI), “smart” healthcare and green growth announced
It is dangerous to engage in business in China now, and those considering engaging with it should pay close attention to the example Taiwanese businesspeople are setting. Though way down from the heady days of Taiwanese investments in China two decades ago, a few hundred thousand Taiwanese continue to live, work and study there, but the numbers have been declining fast. As President William Lai (賴清德) pointed out approvingly to a visiting American Senate delegation, China accounted for 80 percent of the total overseas investment in 2011, but was reduced to just 11.4 percent last year. That is a big drop.
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
Supplements are no cottage industry. Hawked by the likes of the Kardashian-Jenner clan, vitamin gummies have in recent years found popularity among millennials and zoomers, who are more receptive to supplements in the form of “powders, liquids and gummies” than older generations. Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop — no stranger to dubious health trends — sells its own line of such supplements. On TikTok, influencers who shill multivitamin gummies — and more recently, vitamin patches resembling cutesy, colorful stickers or fine line tattoos — promise glowing skin, lush locks, energy boosts and better sleep. But if it’s real health benefits you’re after, you’re
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