An artist from Changhua County’s Lukang Township (鹿港) has painted a mural reflecting people’s aspirations to earn a living during the current economic slump.
Hsu Kun-yang (許坤揚), a ceramic sculptor from Lukang Township who is known for using Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) proverbs in his artwork, painted a mural on the walls of a workshop in an artists’ village located in the township’s Gueihua Alley.
The 63-year-old Hsu started off as a wood sculptor before switching to ceramics and working with Koji ceramics for more than 26 years.
Photo: Chang Tsung-chiu, Taipei Times
Hsu sculpts figures and scenery, and in an effort to promote Hoklo proverbs, he uses Koji ceramics as a medium to demonstrate the meaning behind the proverbs. Because the usage of color is so important in ceramic sculpting, Hsu also has a strong background in painting.
The mural includes children — the black-haired ones representing children from Taiwan and the fair-haired ones children from abroad — to represent the international view of the artist’s village, Hsu said, adding that he also painted some Picasso-esque abstract images to portray action-packed scenes of children running around with balloons and to bring out the elements of modernity and antiquity that infuse the artists’ village.
The image of a fish with nine tails swimming represents luck, while the image of children firing sling-shots instills a sense of nostalgia among Taiwanese born in the 1940s and 1950s, Hsu said, adding that he included an image of a grandparent with his grandchild to represent a comfortable life for the elderly.
Photo: Chang Tsung-chiu, Taipei Times
An image of a child losing a balloon represents the fact that Lukang is close to the sea and is subject to heavy gusts of wind, Hsu said.
Hsu also said that the mural reflected people’s desire to have money in their pockets.
Hsu said the children in his mural were replicas of the five children on the NT$1,000 bank note and that they represented rising consumer prices amid a slumping economy.
On the bill, four children cluster around a globe, while a fifth child peers into a microscope, making science the main theme of the bill. However, in Hsu’s mural, the fifth girl is a balloon figure who is only kept from floating away by a cat holding the balloon’s string in its jaws, signifying the wealth gap in Taiwan.
Average people are suffering, Hsu said, adding that Taiwan’s economy needs to be revived for the nation to have a future.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS