The sixth edition of the Taiwan Biennial is on view at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung through Feb. 10.
Curated by Gong Jow-jiun (龔卓軍) and Chou Yu-ling (周郁齡), the theme of the show is “Wild Rhizome.” It is divided into five subthemes: “Wild Mountains and Seas,” “Wild Images and Alternative Histories,” “Wild Body,” “Wild Constellation” and “Wild Dwelling.”
As part of “Wild Mountains and Seas,” the artist collective Blessing East Coast has used driftwood and bamboo to build a traditional “Aboriginal meeting place,” on the lawn of the museum.
Photo: Ho Tsung-han, Taipei Times
The installation recreates a structure created by artists during protests against the construction of the Miramar Resort Hotel in Taitung County, organizers said.
Hualien-born artist Rahic Talif used marine debris — including plastics, fishing lines and driftwood — to create a “marine art museum.” The abbreviated Chinese characters for “marine art museum” — haimei or meiguan (海美 or 沒館) — indicate that no one is taking care of the oceans.
In their piece titled +300m Wild Habitat (+300m野棲地), architect Eric Chen (陳宣誠) and artist Lin Yann-lyn (林彥伶) have used plant fiber to create a sculpture of Taiwan suspended in mid-air, allowing viewers to see the nation from a different perspective.
Photo: Ho Tsung-han, Taipei Times
“Wild Images and Alternative Histories” and “Wild Body” feature pieces from the 1960s to the 1980s, including photographer Chuang Ling’s (莊靈) footage of events hosted by Theater magazine and director Chen Yao-chi’s (陳耀圻) documentary The Mountain (上山).
“Wild Dwelling,” on the other hand, portrays a change in people’s concept of home with a surge in real-estate prices in the 1990s.
Artist Chang Li-jen (張立人) created a model of a city based on his childhood memories called Battle City (戰鬥之城).
The exhibition challenges the view of contemporary Taiwanese art as being Taipei-centric and categorized by Western notions of contemporary art, Gong said, adding that it is only natural that the Taiwan Biennial should concern itself with the definition of Taiwanese contemporary art.
As the jewel beetle is the key visual of the biennial, Gong said he hopes that the natural colors of the insect, which has often been used for decoration since ancient times, would inspire a new system of color aesthetics.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
Labor rights groups yesterday called on the Ministry of Labor to protect migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing industry, days after CNN reported alleged far-ranging abuses in the sector, including deaths and forced work. The ministry must enforce domestic labor protection laws on Taiwan-owned deep-sea fishing vessels, the Coalition for Human Rights for Migrant Fishers told a news conference outside the ministry in Taipei after presenting a petition to officials. CNN on Sunday reported that Taiwanese seafood giant FCF Co, the owners of the US-based Bumble Bee Foods, committed human rights abuses against migrant fishers, citing Indonesian migrant fishers. The alleged abuses included denying
RSS