The 13th Taipei Biennial opened on Friday at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, with the curators expressing hope that it would reflect artists’ musings over social alienation and the essence of the arts during the height of COVID-19 lockdowns.
Featuring works by 58 local and international artists and musicians, the exhibition — curated by Freya Chou (周安曼), a Hong Kong-based Taiwanese independent curator, New York-based writer Brian Kuan Wood and Beirut Art Center director Reem Shadid — covers a wide range of art forms, including painting, photography, sound installation, installation art and short film.
A series of music-related events including live performances, guided listening sessions and forums began yesterday. The events are to run through March 17 in the Music Room on the museum’s basement level.
Photo courtesy of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum
The Psychedelic Spiritual Ceremony by Taichung-based artist Li Jiun-yang (李俊陽) blends ink paintings, fluorescent pigment paintings and live music performances.
The paintings were improvisations by himself and his artist friends during parties, Li said.
The works embodied their reflections and musings on some of life’s most profound questions: “What is love?” and “Should people get married?”
At the center of the room, a door leads to a smaller room where fluorescent pigment paintings glow on the wall.
The paintings depict seemingly random cartoon characters, mythical beasts and gourds — an auspicious symbol in Chinese-speaking communities that Li says represents his hope for world peace.
Your Tears Remind Me to Cry by Taipei-based artist Yang Chi-chuan (楊季涓) belies its soothing appearance and is actually a “microscopic examination” of fear, with the sculpture embodying the artist’s imagination of what fear would look like if it had a form, a description provided by Yang said.
Down the hall, seven large China vases command visitors’ attention. The vases, crafted in China’s Jiangxi Province by Berlin and Beirut-based artist Raed Yassin, have the appearance of a typical China vase, but they depict scenes from the Lebanese Civil War from 1975 to 1990.
The exhibition runs until March 24.
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
An inauguration ceremony was held yesterday for the Danjiang Bridge, the world’s longest single-mast asymmetric cable-stayed bridge, ahead of its official opening to traffic on Tuesday, marking a major milestone after nearly three decades of planning and construction. At the ceremony in New Taipei City attended by President William Lai (賴清德), Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) and New Taipei City Mayor Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜), the bridge was hailed as both an engineering landmark and a long-awaited regional transport link connecting Tamsui (淡水) and Bali (八里)
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