Untitled Document

Taipei's artistic take on reality
By Caroline Gluck International Herald Tribune
Friday, October 29, 2004

TAIPEI <http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?key=TAIPEI> In terms of its funding and size, the 2004 Taipei Biennial is a minnow in the sea of blockbuster contemporary art shows that have become so fashionable in Asia and the rest of the world.

Nevertheless, Belgium-based Barbara Vanderlinden, who with her Taiwanese colleague, Amy Huei-hua Cheng, pulled the show together in just four months, believes that the Biennial succeeds for reasons other than size. "In Asia, the Taipei Biennial is one of the smallest," she said. "In fact, it's a big museum exhibition, but it's one with the strongest identity."

The fourth Taipei Biennial - called "Do You Believe in Reality?" and running through Jan. 23 at the Fine Arts Museum - showcases contemporary art by more than 40 individual artists and collectives from around the world whose primary material is everyday life and human experience rather than grandiose or abstract ideals.

Many, like Taiwanese artist Chen Chieh-Jen, reflect on the impact of globalization and the social displacement it can cause.

In his haunting, soundless film, "The Factory," former female garment workers were invited to return to an abandoned garment factory seven years after its closure and perform their former tasks. The carefully staged sequences are interwoven with footage of a time when the factory was helping to drive Taiwan's economy, thus emphasizing both personal and collective loss.

"On the surface, it's to do with globalization. Factories are moveable but employees aren't," said the artist. "The deeper part of the message is to show the human factor that stayed. There are certain things that are not changeable."

Some artists in the show are established names, such as Agnès Varda, Yoko Ono, Rem Koolhaas and Steve McQueen. The artists use different media - photography, architecture, performance art, installations - but film and video predominate.

Biennials are designed both to showcase the contemporary art scene in a city or country, and to introduce new ideas from international artists to the local public. While this show is essentially thematic - rather than a survey of the latest art trends - from the moment you enter the lobby, it is clear that it is firmly grounded in a Taiwanese context.

The Chinese architect Chang Yung-Ho's wood and rice paper installations, shaped like cameras and placed at different heights, screen excerpts of 16 documentaries depicting the political, economic and cultural transformation of Taiwan, touching on issues such as immigration and urbanization.

Work by some of the youngest artists question expectations about art and museums. "Invade the TFAM" (the museum's acronym), the work of Kuo I-Chen, a 25-year-old Taiwanese art student, projects the shadow of an airplane crossing the ceiling of the museum, and its low rumbling sound. They are triggered by an outdoor sensor when real planes fly across the museum, which lies near the flightpath of the city's domestic airport. The work is described as an attempt to break down the illusion that in the museum - literally and figuratively - you are sealed off from the outside world.

Part of this show explores the idea of artists as citizens actively involved in the world around them rather than just representing it. The American artist Martha Rosler's installation, "If You Lived Here" (1989), deals with homelessness and what she views as the injustice of capitalism and the shortcomings of political leaders. Social activism is also a hallmark of the Dutch artist Jeanne Van Heeswijk's work. In this show, her collaborative project, "A Paper House," brings the squatter culture of Rotterdam into the museum.

Other artists approached the question of "reality" in a more anthropological way. Lu Jie, the Chinese curator of one of the projects, spent a year working with thousands of government officials, artists and cultural workers from northern Shaanxi province for "The Mapping of Yanchuan Paper-Cuttings," a survey of the traditional folk craft of paper cutting. But is it contemporary art? Yes, said Liu: "I don't think we should protect paper cutting as an exotic, but dying, folk art."

Some works underline the way reality can seem stranger than fiction. In the Albanian artist Anri Sala's documentary, "Time After Time," a single fixed shot coming in and out of focus reveals an old horse standing near a busy highway. It barely moves as cars and their bright lights pass noisily by. You are left pondering how it got there, and why it doesn't leave.