Alexia Fiasco’s work is centered on destruction — or rebuilding — depending on your perspective.
Bricks from Taiwan’s military villages sit next to debris from the suburbs of Paris, silently corroborating each other’s stories about displacement, loss and community. A series of worn daily items, taken from the remains of a demolished social housing unit in France, with a self-portrait of a former resident and meaningful items overlaid on top. The subjects look back at the viewer, some smiling, most with mute stares.
“My subjects took the photos themselves; they needed to control their own images,” the artist says, gesturing at the art work behind her.
Photo: Lery Hiciano, Taipei Times
On an adjacent wall, far from the mailboxes of Parisian social housing, is a wall-sized image of what used to be the view from a home, looking out to Kaohsiung’s port. Chen Po-I’s (陳伯義) photograph is not a view from a window, but a wall that has been removed, the rubble of red bricks framing the scene, highlighting the tension between development and the destruction it inevitably brings. The house used to be in the village of Hongmaogang (紅毛港), a once-thriving fishing community that faced decades of issues caused by industrial development and pollution before residents were eventually relocated and the village partially destroyed.
These works are included in Vanites Modernes (“modern vanities), an exhibition at the National Center of Photography and Images. A collaboration between the Ministry of Culture and the Bureau Francais de Taipei, it is split into two parts — Our Territories, which runs from June 24 to Nov. 2, and The City, which opened last Thursday and runs until Nov. 23.
The show features a total of 212 works by 19 artists, 11 French and 8 Taiwanese, and is the result of nearly 10 years of exchanges between the two countries. Curator Hubert Kilian called it “a dream come true.”
Photo: Courtesy of the National Center for Photography and Images
At the exhibition’s opening ceremony, Kilian spoke alongside Minister of Culture Li Yuan (李遠), French Representative to Taiwan Franck Paris and author Raphaele Bertho, introducing its central concept and revealing some of the work necessary to bring it to fruition.
Li spoke on the modern era facing the consequences of “overdevelopment,” such as pollution, climate change and the lack of stability leading to more loneliness and suffering.
However, the opportunity for France and Taiwan to have a mutual understanding in this era of emptiness “is the most beautiful thing,” he added.
Photo Courtesy of the National Center for Photography and Images
Kilian told the audience to take their time with the gallery, “to consider whether the world can still convey hope.”
The central tension in the gallery between the modern city as the pinnacle of human progress and the destruction its reality necessitates, is conveyed through a variety of mediums.
From the repurposed physical objects by Fiasco and Edith Roux to images of Paris mixed with Delhi, to an augmented reality project imagining an alternative present based on futuristic proposals from the 1960s.
Photo Courtesy of the National Center for Photography and Images
The center’s third floor features Our Territories, photographs that deconstruct how humans believe “themselves masters of the Earth,” replacing the natural landscape with “concrete, asphalt and neon.”
It’s a suitable prequel to The City, identifying the conditions essential to the rise of urban living — a human willingness to transform nature, exploit it and separate ourselves from it through conceptions of civilization and culture.
One of the more sublime works is Tattoo on the Earth, a series by Chang Chih-ta (張志達), where he focuses on street lines. The bird’s eye view detaches the observer from the ground, the black concrete obscures whatever natural landscape once existed and the lines are revealed to be an arbitrary imposition.
Photo: Lery Hiciano, Taipei Times
Overall, the exhibition is an interesting walk through nearly two dozen viewpoints on humanity and modernity, highlighting the shared experience across global boundaries, juxtaposing European landscapes across the room from Taiwanese temples in service of demonstrating core features of the modern human experience.
“I hope the ideas generated through this dialogue between French and Taiwanese artists can be brought back to France and all over the world,” Paris said.
Photo Courtesy of the National Center for Photography and Images
Photo: Lery Hiciano, Taipei Times
Last week the government announced that by year’s end Taiwan will have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world. Its inventory could exceed 1,400, or enough for the opening two hours of an invasion from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Snark aside, it sounds impressive. But an important piece is missing. Lost in all the “dialogues” and “debates” and “discussions” whose sole purpose is simply to dawdle and delay is what the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) alternative special defense budget proposal means for the defense of Taiwan. It is a betrayal of both Taiwan and the US. IT’S
Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” was crowned best picture at the 98th Academy Awards, handing Hollywood’s top honor to a comic, multi-generational American saga of political resistance. The ceremony Sunday, which also saw Michael B. Jordan win best actor and “Sinners” cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw make Oscar history as the first female director of photography to win the award, was a long-in-coming coronation for Anderson, a San Fernando Valley native who made his first short at age 18 and has been one of America’s most lionized filmmakers for decades. Before Sunday, Anderson had never won an Oscar. But “One Battle
In Kaohsiung’s Indigenous People’s Park (原住民主題公園), the dance group Push Hands is training. All its members are from Taiwan’s indigenous community, but their vibe is closer to that of a modern, urban hip-hop posse. MIXING CULTURES “The name Push Hands comes from the idea of pushing away tradition to expand our culture,” says Ljakuon (洪濬嚴), the 44-year-old founder and main teacher of the dance group. This is what makes Push Hands unique: while retaining their Aboriginal roots, and even reconnecting with them, they are adamant about doing something modern. Ljakuon started the group 20 years ago, initially with the sole intention of doing hip-hop dancing.
You would never believe Yancheng District (鹽埕) used to be a salt field. Today, it is a bustling, artsy, Kowloon-ish “old town” of Kaohsiung — full of neon lights, small shops, scooters and street food. Two hundred years ago, before Japanese occupiers developed a shipping powerhouse around it, Yancheng was a flat triangle where seawater was captured and dried to collect salt. This is what local art galleries are revealing during the first edition of the Yancheng Arts Festival. Shen Yu-rung (沈裕融), the main curator, says: “We chose the connection with salt as a theme. The ocean is still very near, just a
RSS