An exhibition of British street artist Banksy’s Love Is In the Bin opens today at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Taipei — the first stop on its international tour.
It is to be displayed in the middle of an individual showroom, giving visitors the opportunity to enjoy the piece from every angle, museum director Loh Li-chen (駱麗真) said yesterday.
Getting Love Is In the Bin to the museum was challenging, because the frame weighs 50kg and the artwork includes pieces of shredded paper, she said.
Photo: CNA
“When opening the box, some colleagues commented that the piece resembled princess Snow White or Sleeping Beauty lying inside a thick, heavy box,” she said, adding that the pieces of paper were wrapped up and placed in another box — and that the total package weighed about 300kg.
“While we were trying to fix the frame or move the artwork, we tried our best not to shake the pieces of paper,” she said, adding that this type of artwork had never been seen before, which made the whole experience extra tricky.
The creation of Love Is In the Bin was in itself an accident. During an auction in 2018, Banksy tried to use an inbuilt self-destruction mechanism to destroy his Girl With Balloon artwork. However, the shredder broke down and only half the painting was shredded — prompting Banksy to rename the work Love Is In the Bin.
The artwork was sold at an auction in 2021 for more than ￡18 million (US$22.8 million), a record for the artist.
“Banksy shredded his work to convey his resistance against capitalism,” Loh said.
Since starting as a street artist, Bansky has used his art to highlight injustice and unrest.
Although his work has appeared on streets, walls and bridges all over the world, few people know his real identity, and plans for the international tour were kept highly confidential before the schedule was announced, Loh said.
As for why MOCA was chosen to be the first location to display the artwork, Loh said the museum has held numerous exhibitions highlighting social issues.
“For example, MOCA was the first official museum to address LGBTQ issues in Asia,” she said.
The exhibition runs until Aug. 13. Admission is free, but visitors must make reservations first.
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS