Taiwanese conceptual artist Dean-E Mei, who was featured in the 1998 Taipei Biennial, makes witty and concise juxtapositions of political and cultural symbols. His current exhibition "Give me huggs" at IT Park - one of Taipei's most prestigious alternative spaces - links aesthetics, politics, sex and consumerism together, and consists of hand-crafted hooked yarn pillows of the 28 national flags of countries (mainly African, Central American and South Pacific islands) that have diplomatic relations with Taiwan (Republic of China). Mei transforms these macho symbols of national identity into domestic comfortable pillows to lay on; thus, mocking notions of statehood and power.

In Chinese, the word "country" is literally translated as "gwo jya" or "country home" and it is that linkage of home and country that Mei explores in his work. Placed on the floor, the pillows encircle the space transforming the white cube into a quasi-living room. Viewers can embrace and lean on the "state" or recline on the bed-sized United Nations pillow to "diplomatically" lay together, while the title "Give me huggs" (Mei preferred the archaic spelling), which is commonly used for Taiwanese sex-line advertisements, lends new meaning to pillow talk or shows how politics make for strange bedfellows.


Via a wall text, Mei connects theories of aesthetics such as the purity of form and color to state power and human affairs. Since many art movements were influenced by politics, Mei concludes that abstract color and form have political content or what he calls an "utopian aesthetic vocabulary," while also noting that the abstract forms and colors of national flags deliberately contain rich symbolic value.

Mei's new version of Taiwan's flag consists of the four different colors of the political parties/coalitions that participated in the recent presidential election. The colors were divided according to the voting percentages. Uncannily, green, the color of the winning party, symbolizes stability according to a wall text that briefly explains Kandinsky's theory. Perhaps, this is an auspicious sign for the current China-Taiwan cross-strait relations.

Confucious is known as one of China's great diplomats and Mei presents a large black and white yarn Confucious whose elongated beard stretches across the room to mimic the length of Chinese history (5000 years). The piece is based on a western tale, where a god's loss of his beard would emasculate him; yet, this man's beard is extremely long threatening to swallow up the entire room with its masculine presence. On the far wall is a row of small framed mittens: white, yellow, red, black and multi-color, which symbolize the different races that Confucious claimed would achieve racial harmony. But these innocent, child-like mittens give the middle finger gesture as if to say that this idea of racial harmony will never work.

Even in spite of Confucius' moral teachings of diplomacy and racial harmony, ethnic identity is still a contentious issue in post-war Taiwan. This is partly due to the structure of the Chinese language, which encourages definitive racial labeling; thus, making assimilation and harmonization a hard-to-reach goal. But in reality, racial harmony may not seem so far-fetched after all, because the nations that recognize Taiwan's autonomy are comprised of other races and Taiwan desperately needs their help.

A hooked yarn wall hanging "In Goods We Trust" shows the entrance to the headquarters of the World Trade Organization whose facade uncannily resembles that of a museum, again linking consumerism, politics and aesthetics. Fabricated in yarn, this hardly seems to be the site of power where the world's fate is decided. Mei shows us that when all is said and done, and political rhetoric and aesthetic theory set aside, economic relationships will eventually rule.