Passport to Taiwan 2012 - Contemporary Art Section

My Brave New World + Mercy to the Earth

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Sunday May 13, 2012     12:00pm-5:00pm

Union Square North, New York City

The common goal of these immigrant artists is to express themselves in this new land, to encourage artistic expression in general, and to provide a venue for exhibition in New York’s crowded art scene. This demonstration shows the cross-disciplinary ability of contemporary Taiwanese artists to interact with audiences, either by use of the body as a tool to express a female perspective on cultural confusion, or the hot topic of the environment, consumer waste, recycling, and climate change. Both themes are ambitious and allow great room for individual interpretation. 

Three female Taiwanese artists, Hu Nung Hsin, Wen Wen Lin and Jade Chiu use mixed media installation and interactive performance;  the sisters Hsiao-ting and Hsiao-Wei Hsieh use modern dance; thus these five artists announce the establishment of Global Taiwanese Women Artist Association. Conveying the Mercy to the Earth message, Chin Chih Yang employs 30,000 aluminum cans in his action, and Lin Shih Pao salutes invention and conflict to urge recycling of 20,000 telephones, the better to reconsider the relationship between the environment and human beings.

My Brave New World:

by TWArtists: A Global Taiwanese Women Artists Association

·         Hu Nung Hsin 胡農欣

·         Wen Wen Lin 林文文

·         Jade Chiu 丘琬琳

·         Hsiao-Wei Hsieh & Hsiao-Ting Hsieh 謝筱瑋, 謝筱婷  with cellist  Nan-Cheng Chen陳南呈

Mercy to the Earth

·         Chin Chih Yang楊金池

·         Lin Shih Pao林世寶

 My Brave New World:

by TWArtists: A Global Taiwanese Women Artists Association

Artists

Hu Nung Hsin 胡農欣

Sushi ,     Performance

This ongoing project represents Hu’ cultural confusion and her difficulty establishing an identity as an Asian female immigrant artist. Food is an important expression of the culture, so she chose sushi, an Asian food, as her subject. This installation mimics the fake food models that are used in restaurants to attract potential customers and to arouse imagination and illusions about the real food. In its texture and form, raw fish resembles human bodies. The artist transformed human bodies into objects resembling fake plastic food. The viewers’ confusion between reality and illusion resembles the way she is perceived by others in this foreign society

Nung-Hsin Hu was born 1981 in Taiwan. In 2006 she moved to New York to pursue her MFA in Fine Arts at Long Island University. Hu woks in sculpture, installation, video, and performance. She has exhibited in the U.S. and abroad. She received the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning’s Van Lier Fellowship, Taipei Artist Village’s Boundary-Break-Through Project Grant, the NYFA-Mentoring Program for Immigrant Artists and fellowships from the I-Park residency, CT, the Casa das Caldeiras residency in São Paulo, Brazil, as well as the Taipei Artist Village residency in Taipei, Taiwan.

Performers:

Kashimi Asai

Nung-Hsin Hu

 Lydia Wei

Make up artist:

Tsuyoshi Sekimoto

Wen Wen Lin 林文文

My Brave New World , Interactive performance

Modern Women Series, installation and performance

My Brave New World  is art in action. It engages viewers in a realm of dis-familiarity, and possibly even a discomfort zone. Committed to art as a mean of social interaction, Lin is neutral and non-directorial as facilitator/joker. She sets up the installation and assists viewers to decode and interact with it, but does not comment upon or intervene in the content of the performance.

This is a creative process for viewers, since they control the outcome and interpretation of this piece.  A video recording of the process will be made into a film: My Brave New World: Faces of Change.

Lady Joker Performer: Angel Yeh 

Modern Women Series is a project exploring seven phases of a woman's relationship with her body, image, and identity.

·         Phase One,  the Elephant Woman (about body hatred: and plastic surgery)

·         Phase Two: the Expansive Woman (about emotional dependence: over-eating and anorexia)

·         Phase Three: Dance of the Caged Woman (about psychiatric drugs)

·         Phase Four: Holes in The Sky (about awakening)

·         Phase Five: Occupy the Body, and the Goddess Nu Guo (about drawing strength from the original mother)

·         Phase Six: Rainbow Bones, When God Was a Woman (about reclaiming creativity)

·         Phase Seven: I Bleed Therefore I Am (Acceptance and Affirmation)

Wen Wen Lin  was trained as an abstract painter by one of the legendary Abstract Expressionist painters, Larry Poons, and is also an avid blogger, poet, film maker and photographer.  Lin’s embrace of the "a whole being" has led to a blurring of disciplinary boundaries in her work..

Lin also writes about those artists who act to subvert totalitarian regimes and fight against social.   Her most recent writing is about artist dissident: Ai Wei Wei: "The Dance of Sunflower Seeds", which can be viewed on her blog: Artivists: Art in Action

In July 2010, Lin founded TWArtists: A Global Taiwanese Women Artists Association, along with founding consultant Kun Shan Huang. https://www.facebook.com/TwArtistsAGlobalTaiwaneseWomenArtistsAssociation

 

Jade Chiu 丘琬琳

Fusion Lovers and Fused Babes， Manikin installations and performance

Jade Chiu has always aspired to start her own label based on a fusion of Eastern culture and Western style.  Inspired by the zodiac theme, a fusion of conceptual eastern context in western beauty.  Throughout her zodiac theme designs, each piece expresses a unique motif, Materials such as fur, skin, and metal create an alchemy of metamorphosis that expresses human qualities such as elegance humor, punk chic and unique style of individualism. Made in N.Y.C., Chiu's Fusion Lovers and Fused Babes is edgy and provocative, original aesthetic ideas fusing exquisite taste and inspired by the zodiac signs. Fusion Lovers is a sensual leather accessories line (belts/ bracelets/ headpieces) designed around the various zodiac animals, each piece possessed of its own distinct personality. Fused Babes is a pop, surreal jewelry line (rings, necklaces, earrings) based on the 12 signs of the zodiac. Each piece of jewelry enhances your facial features and expression.

Jade Chiu is a Taiwanese born accessory and jewelry designer currently based in New York. 
After graduating from Parsons, Chiu worked with labels such as Anna Sui, L.A.M.B., and DVF, later on contributing as accessory designer at Babyphat. 

Hsiao-Wei Hsieh & Hsiao-Ting Hsieh 謝筱瑋，謝筱婷

Double Helix (Stage dance)

Choreographers: Hsiao-Wei Hsieh & Hsiao-Ting Hsieh
Dancers: Hsiao-Wei & Hsiao-Ting Hsieh
Cellist: Nan-Cheng Chen

Symbolic Surroundings (Installation Area improvisational dance)
Choreographers: Hsiao-Wei Hsieh & Hsiao-Ting Hsieh
Dacners: Lorenzo Pagano
Cherri Nelle Thompson
Yuriko Hiroura
Zachary Alexander
Lindsay Poulis
Hsiao-Wei Hsieh
Hsiao-Ting Hsieh

Hsiao-Wei Hsieh and Hsiao-Ting Hsieh are dancers and choreographers from Taiwan, currently working in New York City. They studied Medical Technology and Veterinary Medicine before they discovered a new life in dance. They both studied at LABAN, UK from 2007 to 2008 and graduated from Martha Graham School, U.S.A in 2011. In 2008, they were invited to present their piece titled “Goldberg Fantasia” at the Bonnie Bird Theatre in London. They have performed and presented their choreography widely in New York, including at New Steps Series, 60X60 Dance, EFSD Show, Graham II Spring Season 2011, WAXworks, New York Experience 2012, and NYC 10 Performance.

Nan-Cheng Chen陳南呈, cellist

A native of Taiwan, Nan-Cheng received his Bachelor of Music Degree in 2010 from The Juilliard School and is currently at the same school pursuing his Master of Music Degree, studying with Joel Krosnick. Chen is the executive director of the New Asia Chamber Music Society (NACMS), and a member of Trio 212.  Chen’s recent  engagements include leading NACMS to perform at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall,

Special thanks to Yung Yung Tsuai for dance advisory

Mercy to the Earth

Artists

Chin Chih Yang楊金池

Kill Me or Change, interactive performance art installation

   

Kill Me or Change highlights the impact of personal consumption on the environment and the importance of recycling.

Kill Me or Change, an interactive performance art piece, will take place on July 28 and 29 at the Queens Museum of Art, when 30,000 aluminum beverage cans —the number the average person consumes in a lifetime—will be dropped on the artist’s head, burying him under a mountain of shiny, colorful, and all too common aluminum waste. As a preview, on May 13 the artist will install thousands of cans; placed inside a netting, they will define a variegated metallic topography and Passport to Taiwan visitors  may “adopt” cans that will be used  in the performance by signing them or writing comments on them.

Environmentalism is a global issue, as climate change, affects the entire population of Earth. By not taking action against the destruction of the Earth’s environment and atmosphere, we are pulling on the apocalyptic cord that sends metallic rain crashing to the planet’s surface, like bullets bearing our individual signatures. Not to progress to a greater accord with the living Earth exposes us to the danger that humanity itself may become a waste product.

Chin Chih Yang was born in Taiwan, and has resided for many years in New York City. He received a BFA from Parsons and an MS from Pratt Institute. He has been a recipient of the Urban Artist Initiative Fellowship, a grant from Franklin Furnace, a fellowship from the New York State Council for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, a public art project commission from Queens Council on the Arts/DOT, and a gold medal from the Creativity Annual Awards for creative achievement in photography.

Lin Shih Pao林世寶

Paying tribute to invention and contradiction

 20000 telephones assembled into a vehicle

Lin Shih Pao recycles contemporary high level trash – namely telephones - to create a silent paean to environmental protection.  Although he is talking about environmental protection, Lin salutes the great inventors for their creativeness in bringing humans ever-higher standards of living.  Technological development is vital to keeping the country competitive,  but significantly impacts society by imposing costs in medical care, ecological degradation, and energy scarcity.

Lin’s work always involves audience participation. Lin likes to be face to face with the crowd, and typically collects cheap products to tell a story and demonstrate the links between human beings. The artist thus addresses environmental issues, and hopes to move us to make the earth more habitable..

  Lin Shih Pao lives and works in New York and Japan. He was born in Taiwan, studied in Japan, and completed graduate school at New York University. Lin’s work always reflects the most profound concepts of Asian philosophy, namely a deep sympathy for human beings and an appreciation of the value of the union of humans and nature. His installations are urgently concerned with communication, and gather thousands of participants to form a huge conceptual sculpture. Therefore, the participants lend a democratic character to his work. In 2006, he collected one hundred thousand pacifiers to form a Christmas tree piece. In 2005, he was invited to make a piece called "Gate of Peace" for the world's fair in Tokyo, for which he collected one million pens. Lin’s work has been collected by many museums, corporations, and exhibited in many international museums.