Taipei Dangdai 2022: Exhibitions to See
Sin Wai Kin, A Dream of Wholeness in Parts (2021) (detail). Single-channel video, 4K, colour, sound. 23 min, 3 sec. Produced by Chi-Wen Productions, Taipei. Supported by Hayward Gallery Touring for British Art Show 9. © Sin Wai Kin. Courtesy the artist; Chi-Wen Gallery, Taipei; and Soft Opening, London.
Taipei Dangdai returns for its 2022 edition between 20 and 22 May, 'devising solutions for a shared future' alongside 62 galleries. Ocula Magazine brings you the exhibitions to see around the city.
Sin Wai Kin: Double Feature
Chi-Wen Gallery, No.32, Lane 2, Section 6, Zhongshan North Road
17–28 May 2022
Queering traditional gender binaries while exploring the line between authenticity and performance, two screenings by Turner Prize nominee Sin Wai Kin contend with the anxiety of functioning within the social body.
Starting with the 2019 percussion-accompanied performance If I had the words to tell you we wouldn't be here now, Sin has combined drag with Chinese and Cantonese opera to look at how language shapes the way we think. Beyond representation, Sin highlights how identity is reinforced through the act of naming.
Tang Jo-Hung
Mind Set Art Center, 1F, No.20, Wenhu Street
23 April–20 May 2022
Tang Jo-Hung's paintings combine unique colours and textures into theatrical scenes, where giant figures puff cigarettes and make their way through the landscape.
For the present exhibition, featuring five new paintings, of particular note is the 2.5-metre-wide oil-on-masonite diptych Skating by the Lake (2022)—two side-by-side paintings that appear to mirror one another, with visible differences, the most obvious being the elongated, flesh-toned figure given two profiles and Pinocchio noses.
Lee Yih-hong: A Retrospective
Taipei Fine Arts Museum, No.181, Section 3, Zhongshan North Road
2 April–3 July 2022
Born in Nishikō Village in Tainan during the Japanese Occupation, Lee Yih-hong would often be carried from the local temple to the traditional medicine shop for medicine as a child, nurturing an early interest in Buddhist sculpture, calligraphy, murals, and dragon pillars.
Under the tutelage of painter and calligrapher Chiang Chao-shen, Lee's career, spanning 55 years to date, has faithfully captured Taiwan's landscapes, in addition to overseas scenes from photographs of travels by the artist, resulting in a singular style within modern ink painting.
For the artist's largest retrospective so far, the two threads defining Lee's practice are explored across 'real' and 'imagined' scenes, looking at the coexistence of invention and representation in the artist's landscape-dominant oeuvre.
Jun-Yuan Hong: Gap/Seam
MOCA Taipei, No.39, Chang'an West Road
2 April–29 May 2022
Alluding to the crevices and bars that create in-between spaces in the prison environment, the single-channel video Gap/Seam by Jun-Yuan Hong considers the state of control applied by the Kuomintang in Taiwan from 1947 to 1987.
Narrating a political prisoner's unsuccessful jailbreak, the video interweaves separate narratives, including memories relayed by White Terror victim Tu Nan-Shan, and the political imprisonment of Lin Bi, the great-great-grandfather of actor Sing-Ho Yeung.
Taiwan International Documentary Festival
Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab, No.102, Creators Space
6–15 May 2022
Shortly before Taipei Dangdai, the biennial documentary film festival TIDF will be screening over 130 works by local and international directors. Reflecting the pandemic's effect on filmmaking, this year's sections include 'Stranger than Documentary' and 'DocuMemory'.
Among the films shown, director Chen Chun-tien's Chronicle of Nowhere (2021) addresses Taiwan's architectural history, notably the futuristic UFO houses in northern Taiwan built in the 1980s—symbolic of utopian dreams, now derelict and abandoned.
News from the fields
VT Artsalon, B1, No.17, Lane 56, Section 3, Xinsheng North Road
23 April–2 June 2022
'We saw the market that we go to every day get blown into pieces. Families without a home in just seconds. Children who thought they were going on vacation out of the country,' curator Yulia Kosterieva writes.
This collaboration between Ukrainian interdisciplinary platform Open Place and curator Chen Nien-Ting, conceived in response to the war in Ukraine, explores political transformations following the Cold War in both countries.
An opportunity for introspection, open dialogue, and exchange, six artists highlight striking political similarities between Taiwan and Ukraine.
Mona Hatoum: + and -
Winsing Art Place, No.6, Alley 10, Lane 180, Section 6
2 April–3 July 2022
Exiled to London after the Lebanese Civil War broke out, Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum has been contending with themes related to alienation, unrest, and rootlessness across sculpture and installation for over four decades.
This exhibition at Winsing Art Place combines recent works that reflect social and political unrest around the world, including the staged domestic ruin Remains (play space) (2019), comprising a small crib, two chairs, and children's toys wrapped in chicken wire, burned to their charcoal-black frames.
Miyuki Yokomizo: Visible/Invisible
Double Square Gallery, No.28, Lane 770, Beian Road
7 May–18 June 2022
Yokomizo's textured paintings are made by plucking and pulling back strings covered with oil paint against the canvas, with aggregations of vertical and horizontal lines emerging over time. The result is a woven effect, with the surface of the canvas resembling that of tapestry.
Over 30 such paintings are on view at the gallery, while on the second floor, installations made of found objects further engage the properties of space. Among them, wooden flakes wrapped in gold and silver foil, giving these minimalistic objects 'a silky, supple appearance freed from gravity.'
Kristycharay
ESLITE GALLERY, B1, No.88, Yanchang Road
4–28 May 2022
Kristycharay turns her attention from objects to people in this latest series of rainbow-toned acrylic-and-glitter paintings on view at ESLITE GALLERY, featuring family and community members. Capturing the likeness of her sitters with detailed strokes and flamboyant shades, the resulting works nonetheless retain an oddly realistic quality.
Caught in a floral shirt gifted by the artist's father, with frown lines and strands of hair drawn in an explosion of vivid shades, the artist's 80-year-old mother looks over with welcoming eyes, portrayed following a hospital surgery in Mother (2020).
Lee Kit: Retain a desolate face
Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, No.1, Xueyuan Road
25 February–22 May 2022
Initially trained as a painter, Lee Kit refers to his works, which integrate light projection, objects, and physical space overlaid with imagery and text, as 'settings'—or 'one big painting'.
Shown as part of the Kuandu Biennale 2022 (23 April–27 November), the artist's new multimedia project Retain a desolate face reflects on his relationship to Hong Kong and Taipei, contending with ideas of locality, indigeneity, and political cross-currents.
How We Became Artists
TKG+ Projects, 2F, No.15, Lane 548, Ruiguang Road
19 February–21 May 2022
Beyond the art market, 'are there other channels through which an artist can support themselves?' Curator and academic Tsai Ming-Jiun asks, inquiring into the paths an artist must follow and an academy's responsibility towards their students.
Selected to generate insight, an older generation of eight artists born between 1953 and 1984, including Yuan Goang-Ming, Yao Jui-Chung, and Tu Wei-Cheng (all of whom are represented by Tina Keng Gallery and TKG+) recall the people, remarks, events, environments, and institutions that foreshadowed their success.
Yang Mao-Lin: Mementos
Tina Keng Gallery, 1F, No.15, Lane 548, Ruiguang Road
28 May–16 July 2022
Taiwanese culture and its colonial hybridisation come under scrutiny in Yang Mao-Lin's wood and bronze sculptures of contemporary culture's many fictional characters, taking after emblems from his own childhood, rendered as gods.
Across 40 new sculptures re-interpreting modern faith, figures like Peter Pan, Astro Boy, and Boss Robot are placed within the Buddhist hierarchical system, presenting a synthesis of Taiwan's major cultural symbols and spiritual figures. A lighthearted critique that utilises humour to contend with the absurd and the uncertain.
The Longing for the Abstract
Asia Art Center, 1F, No.128, Lequn 3rd Road
26 March–29 May 2022
For its 40th anniversary, Asia Art Center returns to its post-war roots to stage an exhibition of three artists working in abstraction—Chuang Che, Fong Chung-Ray, and Yang Chihung.
Reflecting different aesthetic trajectories, The Longing for the Abstract presents a celebration of abstraction, opening the imagination for the nondescript to become a placeholder for ideals, sentiment, and desire. The exhibition reflects Taiwan's shifting cultural landscape from the 1980s onwards, with the receipt of influences from Western art movements. —[O]
