text by Sophie Mclntyre
When global attention is focused on China’s accelerating economy and flourishing art market, it is timely to explore the comparatively overlooked and understudied developments in Taiwan’s contemporary art field. This book “Art Island-An Archive Of Taiwan Contemporay Artists“, which features more than 200 contemporary artists currently working in Taiwan, is an effort to redress this issue and to introduce these artists’ works to a broader local and international audience. Given the paucity of material written in English on contemporary art in Taiwan, it is expected that this publication will give international visitors in particular a greater understanding and access to Taiwan’s dynamic and diverse contemporary art field. Having been regularly visiting Taiwan for nearly twenty years for academic and curatorial research, I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet and also collaborate with many of the artists featured in this publication, and I hope those who read this book will also be given this opportunity.
This publication features a selection of Taiwan’s early to mid-career artists who have developed a reputation and attracted critical acclaim nationally and in many cases internationally. It includes a range of artists working in diverse mediums; most significantly, it features artists living not just in the capital, Taipei, but also in regional and rural areas in Taiwan, and comprises a number of important indigenous artists. Despite its small size, Taiwan boasts a substantial and lively arts community. As such, the scope of this publication represents only a fraction of artists living in this country, not mentioning those artists from Taiwan who are currently living and working overseas. It is hoped that this book will be the first of many publications that will introduce these many other artists and that it will help to give this vibrant art field greater exposure to a wider audience.
As a small island located on the geo-political periphery of China, Taiwan’s political and cultural landscape has undergone rapid and considerable change over the past century or more. A significant amount of literature has been written on Taiwan’s history of foreign colonization, and these historical narratives have played a crucial role in the much contested discourse surrounding Taiwan’s national and cultural identity. As an overview, from the 17th century Taiwan was a frontier for exploration and trade for the Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch, and in 1895 the island became a colonial outpost for the Japanese for a period of over forty years. When the Chinese Nationalist Army (KMT) retreated to Taiwan in 1949, they endeavored to eradicate all “foreign” cultural influences so that the island would become a bastion of Chinese cultural tradition as signified by the National Palace Museum. In 1979, Taiwan was officially expelled from the United Nations which marked an important turning point in its historical trajectory and in its quest for national identity. By the 1980s, following years of extraordinary economic growth, massive industrialization and urban development, Taiwan became known as the “Taiwan Miracle” due to its rapid progress. In July1987, martial law was lifted, which officially marked the beginning of Taiwan’s process of democratization. During this time, a multi-party political system was introduced, and restrictions on media and freedom of speech were officially abolished, and in 1996 the first Taiwan-born President, Lee Teng-Hui, was also for the first time popularly elected by the people.
In the years leading up to and immediately following the lifting of martial law, artists who had been inspired by this spirit of political liberalization sought to express the tumultuous political and social changes that were taking place during this decade of democratization. These artists included Wu Tien-Chang and Yang Mao-Lin, who incorporated political iconography and Chinese mythology in their bold, figurative and politically engaged paintings that were stylistically influenced by the Italian trans- avantgarde and Mexican muralist painters. Other artists such as Lee Ming-Sheng and Wu Mali articulated their political, social and environmental concerns through more conceptually-inspired site specific performances and multi-media art installations. As one of the few female artists of her generation who is still actively participating in the contemporary arts field in Taiwan, Wu Mali, who returned from her studies in Germany in 1986, says there was a sense of urgency in the pursuit for democratization as reflected in the rise of social movements in which she also became involved.1 Prior to the lifting of martial law, expressions of political resistance were also manifest in works by Chen Chieh-Jen, who is today one of Taiwan’s most internationally acclaimed artists. In 1983, in a spontaneous performative-based work entitled ‘Malfunction,’ Chen and his artistic collaborators staggered through the crowded lanes of Ximending district fully clothed in white sheets with their feet bound by rope. Chen states, “…what we protested against was not aimed at the political authority, but at our very selves and our oppressive existence.”2
If the zeitgeist of the 1980s was characterized by the quest for democratization, the early 1990s was a period of “Taiwanization” when national identity issues attracted significant attention not only in politics and the mass media but also in the visual arts. After decades of political and cultural repression, the re-building and re-claiming of Taiwan’s national identity and its vernacular culture were of foremost importance to many artists in Taiwan, and particularly to those “Taiwanese” artists who were born and trained in Taiwan and were predominantly painters.3 These artists included Huang Jin-He, Wu Tien-Chang, Yang Mao-Lin, Lien Chien-Hsing, Peng Hsien-Hsiang and Huang Ming-Chuan, whose works feature in this publication amongst many others. These artists’ works were imbued with a so-called “Taiwanese consciousness” (ben tu hua) and these artists’ works were most popular in the rapidly expanding art market.
This “Taiwanese consciousness” was characterized by the re-discovery and what has been theoretically defined as the “invention” of tradition as artists turned towards Taiwan’s local and traditional cultural practices in an effort to unearth and define what was considered part of Taiwan’s “native soil.”4 This can be most clearly seen in works by artists such as Huang Jin-He, whose monumental and brightly colored paintings juxtapose the darker side of contemporary urban culture with more traditional spiritual and folk motifs which he draws from local cultural and religious festivals and sites of worship. Yang Mao-Lin’s iconic series of paintings collectively titled ‘Made in Taiwan’ engages in the popular re-writing of Taiwan’s history, which he seeks to visually translate in an effort to construct a sense of national collective consciousness. In his essay, “Patchwork Memories – Mending the Pieces,” art critic Tsai Hung-Ming states, “…since the lifting of martial law […] and the subsequent process of political reform [...] many historical truths that were intentionally forgotten [...] have re-surfaced, and lost memories [are now being] patched together piece by piece.”5
This historical re-evaluation and “nostalgic longing” for the past is, as Roland Robertson states, partly a consequence of globalization that gives rise to a sense of “estrangement,” “alienation” or “homelessness.”6 In his photographic works, Chen Shun-Chu evocatively explores more personal notions of memory, time and place in his ‘Family Parade’ and ‘Duplicated Memory’ series created during the 1990s. In these photographs which explore familial relationships and childhood memories, the past and present are inextricably entwined. This unearthing and unraveling of lost histories is one way of coming to terms with the complex and deep-rooted changes which define the present reality. In other artists’ works, such as Yang Cheng-Yuan’s paintings, the artist explores the relationship between time and place as he meticulously documents and charts Taiwan’s disappearing architectural and cultural heritage and local artifacts. In Yao Jui-Chung’s photographic series entitled ‘Territory Takeover’ created in 1994, this artist explores these notions of history, identity and nostalgia from a more humorous or satirical perspective. Drawing upon the age-old Chinese political slogan “Expel the Barbarians and recover lost land,” Yao traveled to the six historically significant sites around the island where each of the colonial powers landed, and like a dog marking its territory, urinated on each site. Each photograph which commemorated the “event” was tinged with a yellow-ish sepia to make them appear historical or appeal to our sense of nostalgia. In reference to this work, Yao states:
…at the time there was a lot of discussion about Taiwan’s national identity, and politicians were
accusing each other of not being ‘Taiwanese’. In doing this work I wanted to remind people that
Taiwan is a colonized country and that we need to open up our minds to a new identity.7
While these artists’ works may have given expression to a certain “Taiwanese consciousness,” what exactly defined Taiwan’s “native” identity and “authentic” culture was the focus of a heated discussion during the mid-1990s between local critics and some artists whose opinions on this subject were published as a collection of essays in a local art magazine (Hsiung Shih) in the mid-1990s. In this discussion, the artist’s background, training, political ideology and “sensibility” were brought into question as these writers endeavored to define what was authentically “Taiwanese” or bentu. This discourse primarily revolved around a dialectic between localism and internationalism, and it was fundamentally a Han-Chinese debate in which Taiwan’s indigenous artists’ voices were absent.
Responding to the heightened politicization of this identity discourse, some artists such as Mei Ding-Yen, Lien Te-Cheng and Wu Mali created works during the 1990s that critically engaged in these issues. Employing political motifs or signifiers and word play along with humor and irony, these artists sought to critique this identity debate as they deconstructed notions of identity, ideology and authenticity. For example, Mei Ding-Yen’s mixed-media installation ‘Ai Tun Di Ti’ (a Chinese transliteration for the word “identity”) explored the meaning of identity in relation to Taiwan’s national status and its culture of “check book diplomacy.” In Wu Mali’s work entitled “Epitaph,” the artist poetically and poignantly explores the absence of women in the re-writing of Taiwan’s national histories, focusing on the tragic February 28 incident (er er ba) in 1947 in which many Taiwanese were murdered by KMT military forces.
The two aforementioned artists, Mei and Wu, were amongst many other artists who received their education overseas (mostly in Europe and the United States) and returned to Taiwan in the late 80s and early 90s. These artists, whose works tended to be more conceptually oriented, sought to embrace a more cosmopolitan, pluralist vision that transcended geo-political national identity concerns. Among these artists were Wang Jun-Jieh, Yuan Goang-Ming and Ku Shih-Yung, who experimented with computer technology and imaging to broadly examine environmental concerns, the body, memory, and the relationship between public and private space. For these and other artists, including Tsong Pu, Lai Tsun-Tsun, Chen Hui-Chiao, Wang Der-Yu and Lin Ming-Hong (Michael Lin) amongst others, these identity issues were primarily a political issue as they sought to express more conceptual and personal concerns that transcended national identity issues.
A number of these overseas-trained artists formed artist collectives and helped establish new exhibition spaces, such as Apartment Two (which transformed into SLY Art Space) and IT Park. Established in 1988 by a group of artists, IT Park is one of Taiwan’s first alternative galleries and has played an important role in the development, promotion and in the critical appraisal of Taiwan’s contemporary art. Since this time, numerous commercial galleries and also artist-run spaces have opened and some were forced to close with the Asian financial crises, while others re-located to China. More recently, perhaps due to China’s inflated art market, local and international collectors are turning their attention to Taiwan’s contemporary art. As a reflection of this trend, in 2007 more than 15 new commercial galleries opened in Taipei and in the regional centers of Taiwan over a period of less than 12 months.
For some of Taiwan’s contemporary indigenous artists, the market is beginning to open up as their works are attracting some attention from art museums, collectors and overseas visitors. Many of these artists live in the southern regions of Taiwan, and until now they have been struggling to survive in the field of contemporary art in which distinctions between what is considered “art” and “craft” still prevail. This book introduces a number of these artists, including Siki Sufin, Sakuliu Pavavalung, Eleng, Tafong Kati, Ruby Swna, Yiming Mavaliu and Anli Lai, many of whom work at the Sugar Factory Art and Culture Museum in Dulan in the south-eastern region of Taitung. These artists work in a variety of materials though primarily in wood, creating sculptures that characteristically draw on their own distinctive traditional tribal motifs which they combine with more abstract elements to create a highly personalized language. Walis Labai (Wu Diing-Wu) is another indigenous artist of mixed Han-Chinese and indigenous Taiwanese descent, and is one of the few aboriginal artists who has chosen to live and work in Taipei. Unlike many of his peers, Walis Labai’s more conceptually oriented photographic works have attracted attention in mainstream art circles and in the art market for the last decade or more. In his lenticular print series entitled ‘Invisible People,’ the artist appropriates historical and anthropological photographs taken during the period of Japanese colonization to reflect upon the plight of indigenous peoples in Taiwan. In these portraits the artist uses digital scanning techniques and grating plates to effectively invert and de- stabilize the colonial gaze.
With the impact of globalization and the Internet, notions of time and place are becoming increasingly ambiguous and the discourse surrounding Taiwan’s national identity in the visual arts has largely disappeared as “Taiwanese consciousness” has become part of everyday life in Taiwan. Furthermore, a new generation has emerged. These young artists have not experienced the effects of martial law and political and cultural repression. For this generation, identity is defined not in terms of the nation- state or the collective, but in relation to the individual. Increased mobility and greater accessibility to new digital technology has created exciting opportunities for global exchange and artistic experimentation. Unlike many of their predecessors, who sought to invoke in their works a sense of “Taiwanese-ness,” this younger generation of artists define their environment through the lens of universalism as they traverse, via digital technology, and more personal and also virtual worlds. For example, artists including Wang Ya-Hui, Kuo I-Chen, and Tseng Yu-Ching, whose works feature in this book, share an interest in the human psyche and also outer planetary realms that transcend the everyday. In Wang Ya-Hui’s evocative new media works, the artist draws from the tangible, corporeal world to explore the juncture between memory, space and time, as her work the ‘Visitor’ reveals. In contrast, in Kuo I-Chen’s multimedia interactive installation entitled ‘Survivor,’ the artist explores an apocalyptic world in which real and virtual worlds collide in outer space while Tseng Yu-Chin’s video installations recollect childhood memories and delve into the shadowy depths of human psychology.
It is impossible within the scope of this essay to discuss each artist’s work featured in this publication. There are many artists whose works have not been discussed but that deserve attention, and there are many others who do not feature in this book. However it is hoped this publication will serve to introduce the reader to Taiwan’s dynamic contemporary art field, and encourage further research, dialogue and exchange with these artists.
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1. Wu Mali, interview with the author, 2007.
2. Chen Chieh-Jen, interview with the author, 1998.
3. During this period ethnic and cultural distinctions were forged between the “Taiwanese” (benshengren), whose family came to Taiwan prior to 1949 and lived through the period of Japanese colonisation; and the Mainland Chinese (waishengren) who arrived in Taiwan with Chiang Kai-Shek and his Nationalist Army in 1949.
4. Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger (eds). The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1983.
5. Tsai Hung Ming, “Patchwork Memories – Mending the Pieces,” Quest for Identity, Taipei Fine Arts
Museum, 1996, p18.
6. Robertson, R. “After Nostalgia? Willful Nostalgia and the Phases of Globalization,” B. S. Turner (ed), Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity, Sage, London, 1990, pp 45-61.
7. Yao Jui-Chung, interview with the author, 1995. |
