On display at CANS Tea & Book Shop is Next Superstar (未來大明星), a joint exhibition of seven emerging Taiwanese and Chinese artists. It includes Chinese artist Xu Jiong’s (許炯) minimalistic-style squiggly ink paintings and Taiwanese artist Huang Chih-cheng’s (黃至正) prints of half-human half-animal figures that convey the frailty of life. Also in the lineup is Chinese comic book artist Yan Cong (煙囪) whose graffiti-like work is influenced by characters from children’s cartoons.
■ CANS Tea & Book Shop (罐子茶書館), 9 Lishui St, Taipei City (台北市麗水街9號), tel: (02) 2321-6680. Open daily from 1pm to 9pm
■ Until Sept. 30
Photo courtesy of MBMore
Printmaking shop MBMore is currently featuring the works of three young printmaking artists, Lee Jhih-Yun (李芷筠), Aaron Horse (林恩崙) and Wu Pei-hsuan (吳佩璇). No One Here explores the notion of fleetingness. Lee’s messy depiction of keyboard buttons and charts represent a flow of thought and how the human mind does not think in logical ways, while Horse conveys this through etchings of dismembered thumbs. Wu’s lithographic prints appear to be merely black sheets of paper, but upon closer inspection, eerie silhouettes and shadows are revealed, which seem to suggest the adage that nothing is what it seems.
■ MBMore (岩筆模), 275, Nanjing W Rd, Taipei City (台北市南京西路275號), tel: (02) 2558-3395. Open Tuesday to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until Oct. 2
Photo courtesy of MOCA
Czech artist Milena Dopitova’s will show her photographs and video installations at VT Art Salon. My Body is a Temple is a collaboration with musician Peter Wagner, who provides audio for Dopitova’s meditative work, while the title alludes to the Christian concept of treating one’s body like a temple where the Holy Spirit dwells. Dopitova uses this central theme to challenge her own existence, as well as the relationship and gaps between individuals and society.
■ VT Art Salon (非常廟藝文空間), B1, 47 Yitong St, Taipei City (台北市伊通街47號B1), tel: (02) 2516-1060. Open Tuesdays to Thursdays from 1:30pm to 9pm, and Fridays and Saturdays from 1:30pm to 10pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Oct. 22
Photo courtesy of TKG+
Currently on display at MOCA is Project: Finding Home (菲常態：尋找家園), a solo exhibition by Filipino artist Ronald Ventura. Ventura is known for his elaborate and evocative surrealist paintings, sculptures and installations which incorporate elements of the folk traditions found in the Philippines, American pop culture and Japanese anime. The complex layering evident in his work alludes to the fact that the Philippines was repeatedly colonized by foreign powers and how this has led to a rather complex and tortured notion of national identity — and in turn, Ventura’s own sense of belonging. Ventura has also created a series of site-specific installations at MOCA that explore what the concept of “home” means to Filipino migrant workers in Taiwan.
■ 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. Admission: NT$50
■ Until Nov. 20
Photo courtesy of MBMore
The Taipei-born, Vietnam-based Charwei Tsai (蔡佳葳) says her calligraphy and installations are influenced by Buddhism and the Buddhist concept of emptiness, though she is not a religious person. In Universe of Possibilities (宇宙的可能性), which opens at TKG+ Projects tomorrow, Tsai uses ephemeral objects in her artwork to ponder the way in which the human mind perceives things. In the video installation Bardo (2016), Tsai collaborates with Tibetan filmmaker Tsering Tashi Gyalthang to explore the concept of life after death. In the photographic series Universe of Possibilities (2016), what appears to be planets are actually close-ups of discarded fishing nets along the coast of central Vietnam.
Chen Ching-yuan (陳敬元) continues to examine Taiwanese politics and his own identity in What Am I? If I Can’t Be Yours, which also opens at TKG+ Projects tomorrow. The title derives its name from the song Thanatos: If I Can’t Be Yours from a Japanese anime film. Chen offers his own interpretation of the lyrics, challenging the usage of language as a mode of communication and as a way of understanding ourselves and the things around us.
■ TKG+ Projects, B1, 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號B1), tel: (02) 2659-0798. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Both exhibitions open tomorrow and are until Nov. 20
The term “pirates” as used in Asia was a European term that, as scholar of Asian pirate history Robert J. Antony has observed, became globalized during the European colonial era. Indeed, European colonial administrators often contemptuously dismissed entire Asian peoples or polities as “pirates,” a term that in practice meant raiders not sanctioned by any European state. For example, an image of the American punitive action against the indigenous people in 1867 was styled in Harper’s Weekly as “Attack of United States Marines and Sailors on the pirates of the island of Formosa, East Indies.” The status of such raiders in
Feb. 9 to Feb.15 Growing up in the 1980s, Pan Wen-li (潘文立) was repeatedly told in elementary school that his family could not have originated in Taipei. At the time, there was a lack of understanding of Pingpu (plains Indigenous) peoples, who had mostly assimilated to Han-Taiwanese society and had no official recognition. Students were required to list their ancestral homes then, and when Pan wrote “Taipei,” his teacher rejected it as impossible. His father, an elder of the Ketagalan-founded Independence Presbyterian Church in Xinbeitou (自立長老會新北投教會), insisted that their family had always lived in the area. But under postwar
On paper, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) enters this year’s nine-in-one elections with almost nowhere to go but up. Yet, there are fears in the pan-green camp that they may not do much better then they did in 2022. Though the DPP did somewhat better at the city and county councillor level in 2022, at the “big six” municipality mayoral and county commissioner level, it was a disaster for the party. Then-president and party chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) made a string of serious strategic miscalculations that led to the party’s worst-ever result at the top executive level. That year, the party
As much as I’m a mountain person, I have to admit that the ocean has a singular power to clear my head. The rhythmic push and pull of the waves is profoundly restorative. I’ve found that fixing my gaze on the horizon quickly shifts my mental gearbox into neutral. I’m not alone in savoring this kind of natural therapy, of course. Several locations along Taiwan’s coast — Shalun Beach (沙崙海水浴場) near Tamsui and Cisingtan (七星潭) in Hualien are two of the most famous — regularly draw crowds of sightseers. If you want to contemplate the vastness of the ocean in true
RSS