Reality｜Undercurrent (現實伏流) is a four-person show curated by Lai Yi-hsin (賴依欣) that pays homage to the revolutionary spirit of Li Poetry Society (笠詩社), a pioneering Taiwanese community of poets founded in the 60’s. While Taiwan was still under martial law, the society advocated artistic freedom and promoted literary endeavors that focused on everyday life and social realities. Their works feature a keen interest in realism and “allegories of the collective destiny of Taiwanese,” writes Lai. Their use of poetry as a form of cultural resistance is reinterpreted through the identities and social situations of the featured artists. Lee Hsu-pin (李旭彬) is a photographer who often explores the connection between image and text. His recent work The Mysterious Vanishing of, includes different narrative scenes that weave a fictional storyline about nation, justice and social environments. Tsai Wan-hsuan (蔡宛璇) is a multimedia artist who works with installation, drawing, video and poetry, and here presents Passing Through a Dim Light Named “Li,” an oral narration that “rediscovers the dynamic energy of verbal communication,” writes curator Lai.
■ 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
■ Until Nov. 25
Photo Courtesy of Gu Ju
Currently on view at Jut Art Museum, The Flying Land (逆旅之域) is a group exhibition that explores themes of migration, housing and temporary dwelling in contemporary societies. The show brings together eight artists from Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, Germany and the Netherlands to explore new definitions of belonging, homeland and residence. “As people migrate and disperse, how [are] heterotopias [formed]…in urban environments?” reads the exhibition brochure. Lo Yi-chun (羅懿君) is a Taiwanese artist whose works often deals with climate change, trade relations and social concerns. Lo’s sculptural installation, Voyage to the Homeland, which won the 2015 Kaohsiung Fine Arts prize, consists of five boats made with banana peels that are suspended in mid-air and oriented as if navigating towards a specific direction. The work transports the viewer back to the age of exploration and addresses the history of international trade and global travels. Tatzu Nishi is a Tokyo and Berlin-based artist who is known for creating large installations in public spaces. He transforms open city spaces into domestic areas, such as living rooms and hotel units; and in this process, transforms outdoor monuments and streetlights into decorative parts of his new interiors. Tatzu presents a large installation in a public park that examines the political crises lurking below Taiwan’s everyday life.
■ Jut Art Museum (忠泰美術館) 178, Civic Blvd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市市民大道三段178號), tel: (02) 8772 6178. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm
■ Until Jan. 20
Photo Courtesy of TKG+ Projects
Running concurrently with the Taichung World Flora Exposition is an ambitious flora-themed show at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Flowers of Immense Charm (花之禮讚) is a collaboration between the National Palace Museum, Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, CHIMEI Museum and National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and explores the many meanings and characteristics that flowers embody in different art and cultural contexts. According to the exhibition preface, the show includes “a medley of artistic styles” from each museum collection, including ceramics, furniture, calligraphy, painting, poems and paintings from China, Japan and Europe. These art pieces demonstrate a wide range of artistic activity since the 11th century until the present. In addition, 20 Taiwanese contemporary artists are also showing alongside the museum collections to represent “a cultural perspective that defines Taiwan’s subjectivity.” Exhibition highlights include Pietra Dura-inlaid Table by Italian Fratelli Becini. The finely crafted early 20th century beech wood table features a black marble surface inlaid with different colored marble and precious stones. “The petals and leaves of the roses appear to be almost real while the sky blue border of the morning glory has imbued this nature scene with greater elegance and refinement,” reads the exhibition brochure.
■ National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (國立台灣美術館), 2, Wuquan W Rd Sec 1, Taichung City (台中市五權西路一段2號), tel: (04) 2373-3552. Open Tuesdays to Fridays from 9am to 5pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 9am to 6pm.
■ Until Feb. 10
Photo Courtesy of TKG+ Projects
Tomb of the Soul, Temple, Machine and the Self (靈魂的墓穴、神廟、機器與自我) is currently on view at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts. As a curated selection of modern and contemporary works from the permanent collection of the museum, the show takes on different approaches to the body as a way to reflect on the state of culture, politics and collective consciousness in post-colonial Taiwan. “The body is the last remaining frontier that mirrors complexities produced by thoughts, cultures and ideologies; it explicitly and implicitly intertwines and interacts with these complexities,” writes curator Ko Nien-pu (柯念璞). The show “teases out the relationships between different conceptions of the body” in attempt to generate possibilities of new thinking. The late Ku Fu-sheng (顧福生) was a prominent modern painter and member of the Fifth Moon Group. Where to? is one of his later paintings and depicts an abstract figure in motion. The animated gesture suggests a philosophical contemplation of our motivations and endeavors. Hou Chun-ming (侯俊明) is Taiwanese artist known for his prolific woodcut prints that draw inspiration from old Chinese books and religious events. God of War is a print on paper that depicts the artist’s original interpretation of a modern warrior god.
■ Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (高雄市立美術館), 80, Meishuguan Rd, Kaohsiung City (高雄市美術館路80號) tel: (07) 555-0331. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm
■ Until Oct. 21
Photo Courtesy of Tokyo Fuji Art Museum
Shashinkan Gelatin is a Tokyo-based photographer with a background in graphic design. Since the 90’s she has been creating beautifully textural black and white photographs using silver gelatin techniques, a process that involves manipulating silver salted gelatin on top of the filmed image. Shashinkan Gelatin is especially interested in old and ephemeral things and events; for her solo exhibition, Ruins (殘存), at Taipei’s Gu Ju, the artist presents a series of new images that she has created from her recent travels to Nagasaki’s Warship Island, Ikeshima, and The Site of Shuinandong Mine Selection Field and Refinery (十三層水湳洞選煉廠遺址) in New Taipei City. The images of these sites reveal traces of past activities of a bygone era.
■ Gu Ju (谷居), 38, Ln 14, Dihua St Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市迪化街一段14巷38號), tel: (03) 526-3176. Open Tuesdays to Sundays 10am to 7pm
■ Until Oct. 28
Photo Courtesy of Jut Art Museum
May 11 to May 17 Traversing the southern slopes of the Yushan Range in 1931, Japanese naturalist Tadao Kano knew he was approaching the last swath of Taiwan still beyond colonial control. The “vast, unknown territory,” protected by the “fierce” Bunun headman Dahu Ali, was “filled with an utterly endless jungle that choked the mountains and valleys,” Kano wrote. He noted how the group had “refused to submit to the measures of our authorities and entrenched themselves deep in these mountains … living a free existence spent chasing deer in the morning and seeking serow in the evening,” even describing them as
Yesterday, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) nominated legislator Puma Shen (沈伯洋) as their Taipei mayoral candidate, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) put their stamp of approval on Wei Ping-cheng (魏平政) as their candidate for Changhua County commissioner and former legislator Tsai Pi-ru (蔡壁如) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) has begun the process to also run in Changhua, though she has not yet been formally nominated. All three news items are bizarre. The DPP has struggled with settling on a Taipei nominee. The only candidate who declared interest was Enoch Wu (吳怡農), but the party seemed determined to nominate anyone
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What government project has expropriated the most land in Taiwan? According to local media reports, it is the Taoyuan Aerotropolis, eating 2,500 hectares of land in its first phase, with more to come. Forty thousand people are expected to be displaced by the project. Naturally that enormous land grab is generating powerful pushback. Last week Chen Chien-ho (陳健和), a local resident of Jhuwei Borough (竹圍) in Taoyuan City’s Dayuan District (大園) filed a petition for constitutional review of the project after losing his case at the Taipei Administrative Court. The Administrative Court found in favor of nine other local landowners, but
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