Passport to Taiwan 2012 - Contemporary Art Section
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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
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.
