Taiwanese artist Wang Su-ling (王淑鈴) was awarded the US Department of State Medal of Arts award at a White House ceremony on Wednesday, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a Facebook post yesterday.
Born in Taichung, Wang is known for her large-scale, abstract paintings that explore her sense of place and the distance between Eastern and Western cultures.
The award to Wang “symbolizes the role of cultural diplomacy in strengthening the people-to-people ties between the United States and Taiwan,” AIT said.
Photo courtesy of AIT
In addition, AIT said it feels privileged to have Wang’s oil painting The Singing River 2, a work influenced “by the landscape of her childhood in Taiwan and the changes that followed,” in its permanent collection.
Wang joined four other international artists in receiving the medal from US First Lady Jill Biden at the International Medal of Arts Ceremony, AIT said.
According to AIT, the Medal of Arts award was established in 2012 as part of the US Department of State’s Art in Embassies program, in partnership with the US Secretary of State, to formally recognize artists who have played an exemplary role in advancing the department’s mission to promote cultural diplomacy.
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
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