Northeast China Yao-at-work Photography Exhibition (東北妖站街日常) is an artistic study of Yao (妖) culture. Literally translated as enchantress, Yao refers to a type of male street hooker in Northeast China that cross-dresses as a woman. The organizers, including several student and civil groups focusing on issues related to sex work, aids and LGBT rights, hope that the exhibition will broaden the public’s understanding of international LGBT issues. According to one of the organizers, Cool Loud Collective, Taiwanese today are well informed of European and American discourses about diverse sexualities. By providing a glimpse of a gender-related fringe culture happening in China, the show is a way to regionalize discourses of identity and gender by understanding relevant cultural developments within Asia. The exhibition includes works by Chinese photographer Wu Huiyuan (伍惠源), documentary films by Liu Yan (劉言), Lin Chunde (林純德) and Guo Lixin (郭力昕), as well as personal items and clothing borrowed from Yao workers in China.
■ Waley Art (水谷藝術), 6, Lane 322, Wanda Rd, Taipei City (台北市萬大路322巷6號), tel: (02) 2301-1821. Open daily from 12pm to 7:30pm.
■ Until Nov. 17
Photo: courtesy of Yumiko Izu
Catch the last week of Spectrosynthesis-Asian LGBTQ issues and Art Now (光合作用 — 亞洲當代藝術同志議題展), a group exhibition that explores the state of LGBTQ issues in Asia. Curated by Sean Hu (胡朝聖), the show features 51 works by 22 artists from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and China. The show offers diverse perspectives concerning equality, identity, diversity and human desire. The artworks on view span across different generations, including Shiy De-jinn’s (席德進) luscious portraits of an adolescent boy and girl that date from the 1960s. “The essence of portraiture lies in the exploration of the figure’s psyche, which reveals the subject’s deep, inner secrets,” Shiy writes. In contrast to Shiy’s introspective approach, new media artist Chuang Chi-wei’s (莊志維) Rainbow in the Darkness is an interactive grid of six light boxes covered by black paint. Visitors are encouraged to leave messages on the light boxes by etching writing into the surface, thereby scraping off the paint to reveal the colorfully illumination underneath. Chen Chien-pei’s (陳建北) ongoing film project, Interface, chronicles the hand movements of a friend who has multiple personalities. Identifying his body as an interface to his many characters, Chen began filming his friend’s hands in 2001 to trace his changing body languages that accommodate different expressions of emotions and thought. To celebrate the occasion of Taiwan’s pride parade tomorrow, the museum will extend its opening hours until 9pm.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art (台北當代藝術館), 39 Changan E Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號), tel: (02) 2552-3721. Opens Tuesdays to Sundays from 10pm to 6pm.
■ Until Nov. 5
Photo: courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei
Japanese-American artist Yumiko Izu creates beautifully nuanced, black-and-white photographs using 8 x 10 framed camera and platinum printing. Her debut exhibition in Taiwan showcases four bodies of still life prints that trace her ongoing observations about natural life cycles. Secret Garden captures the beauty of flowers as they pass through life and death, blurring the boundaries between the two polarities. As the artist plays with light and darkness, she speaks to the many layers of meaning bestowed on the idea of illumination. The show also includes the still life themes of bones, nests and feathers. The nest series, in particular, depicts bird nests that Izu has collected over the years. The nests are made with branches, cloth and other miscellaneous material that the birds collect in their surrounding habitat. In addition to the prints on view, Izu’s photography book, which includes some of the works on show, is also available at the gallery for collection.
■ 1839 Contemporary Gallery (當代藝廊), B1, 120 Yanji St, Taipei City (台北市延吉街120號地下樓), tel: (02) 2778-8458. Opens Tuesdays to Sundays from 11pm to 8pm.
■ Until Nov. 19
Photo: courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei
Tainan-based artist Lee Hsin-yuan’s (李欣芫) solo exhibition Place [II] Collection of Understanding (地方 [II] : 理解的收藏) features a collection of works from her ongoing Place Project, which was initiated in 2014. Primarily working through drawing, installation and performance, Lee explores the sensibilities of inhabiting space, seeking to understand our relationship with our daily environment and the people around us. The show includes two bodies of work that draw reference from the environment of small neighborhoods in Tainan. The first part of the show is a series of sketches that depict trees, paired with newspaper clippings and media recordings that together form an assemblage of social and political elements affecting the daily existence of local residents. The second part is a metal-sheet installation that references the illegal augmentations of rooftops that streamline Taiwan’s cityscapes. The installation is accompanied by a looped selection of field recordings from local temples, rain hitting on sheet metal houses and construction sites. Catch Lee’s sound performance tomorrow, when she will explore the gallery space and its inhabiting objects through gesture and sound.
■ FreeS Art Space (福利社), 82 Xinsheng N Rd, Taipei City (台北市新生北路三段82號), tel: (02) 2585-7600. Opens Mondays to Saturdays from 11pm to 5pm.
■ Until Nov. 18
Photo: courtesy of Wu Huiyuan
Crossing the River(過江) is a solo photography exhibition by Zhou Yue (周越) that captures moments from the artist’s travels through North Korea this year. Zhou is an award-winning photographer born and raised in Dandong, the largest Chinese city adjacent to the North Korean border. The flavor of Korean culture is intermingled in the landscape of his hometown, where both Korean and Chinese are spoken on a daily basis. Through the medium of photography, Zhou seeks to provoke thought and raise awareness of social-political issues. “On the train to Pyongyang, I saw plenty of signs with yellow words in red background…on the mountains and in the fields. They stand out even more when the snow covers the land.” The 38 photographs on display reveal Zhou’s observations of North Korea as a highly controlled state and the impossible distance between people produced by the expansive umbrella of political surveillance.
■ Onfoto Studio, 22, Lane 286, Shitung St, Taipei City (台北市士東路286巷22號), tel: (02) 8866-1982. Contact the gallery for changing opening hours.
■ Until Nov. 5
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) invaded Vietnam in 1979, following a year of increasingly tense relations between the two states. Beijing viewed Vietnam’s close relations with Soviet Russia as a threat. One of the pretexts it used was the alleged mistreatment of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam. Tension between the ethnic Chinese and governments in Vietnam had been ongoing for decades. The French used to play off the Vietnamese against the Chinese as a divide-and-rule strategy. The Saigon government in 1956 compelled all Vietnam-born Chinese to adopt Vietnamese citizenship. It also banned them from 11 trades they had previously
Jan. 12 to Jan. 18 At the start of an Indigenous heritage tour of Beitou District (北投) in Taipei, I was handed a sheet of paper titled Ritual Song for the Various Peoples of Tamsui (淡水各社祭祀歌). The lyrics were in Chinese with no literal meaning, accompanied by romanized pronunciation that sounded closer to Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) than any Indigenous language. The translation explained that the song offered food and drink to one’s ancestors and wished for a bountiful harvest and deer hunting season. The program moved through sites related to the Ketagalan, a collective term for the
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Growing up in a rural, religious community in western Canada, Kyle McCarthy loved hockey, but once he came out at 19, he quit, convinced being openly gay and an active player was untenable. So the 32-year-old says he is “very surprised” by the runaway success of Heated Rivalry, a Canadian-made series about the romance between two closeted gay players in a sport that has historically made gay men feel unwelcome. Ben Baby, the 43-year-old commissioner of the Toronto Gay Hockey Association (TGHA), calls the success of the show — which has catapulted its young lead actors to stardom -- “shocking,” and says
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