The 2006 Taipei Biennial organized by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum that has been one year in the making will officially open to the public on November 4. With “Dirty Yoga” as its theme, the Biennial is co-curated by American curator Dan Cameron and Taiwanese curator Jun-jieh Wang.
“Dirty Yoga” uses yoga, an activity that has become very popular in Taipei in recent years, as a metaphor and its point of departure. As a popular pursuit, it no longer reflects the original spirit of yoga. Taking the extreme values that it suggests, such as fear and desire, sickness vs. health, ugliness vs. beauty and local vs. international, “Dirty Yoga” tries to link them up with the binary oppositions in the context of globalization, and explore the possibility of a discourse of “between-ness”. As the adjectives “dirty” and “restricted” in the English and Chinese titles of the exhibition suggest, it implies a liminal state, where new possibilities can arise out of negative conflicts through a process of cleansing and breakthrough.
This year, we have invited a total of thirty-four individuals or groups from the United States, Cuba, Jamaica, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, Britain, Sweden, Italy, Palestine, Indonesia, Thailand, Pakistan, India, Japan, South Korea, mainland China and Taiwan to participate in the Biennial, highlighting the value of cultural difference, which is amply illustrated by the overall exhibition design and the thirteen site-specific new works. The first powerful visual sensation is provided by Regina Silveira’s work: the external walls of the museum are covered with thousands of black footprints, symbolizing illusion, desire, conquest and deconstruction. Echoing Silveria’s work is Katharina Grosse’s new piece executed for the Biennial. She piles up a huge pile of earth in the lobby and sprays bright paint on it, subverting the use of space and deconstructing it with material and colour. The external walls and lobby of the museum are transformed to resemble a building that is falling apart, firing the viewers’ imagination.
Several artists in this Biennial present their work in the form of image installation. Alexandre Arrechea takes a sharp look at the invisible cages in the contemporary social order through a huge surveillance tree made up of several surveillance cameras. Through incisive editing, sounds and rhythm, the art group El Perro turns the skateboarding of young people into a metaphor for the absurdity of the battlefield in Baghdad. Valeska Soares, on the other hand, uses a claustrophobic space to make viewers confuse reality with illusion. Jennifer Steinkamp’s work has always explored the relationship between viewer and the perspective of the image through huge digital images. Her present work takes off from a shipwreck disaster, pushing the viewer’s visual and spatial experience to an extreme through the simulacrum of the images. With a five-screen projection installation, Nalini Malani tells an episode in the course of the founding of the state of India in the 1940s in which tens of thousands of women were raped through intense and powerful images. Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook has caused an international sensation with her work about reading a text to a corpse. Her present five-screen projection installation is a record of female mental patients, subverting the meaning of “communication”.
An important branch of contemporary art in recent years, “photographic” expression is also prominently featured in this Biennial. Kazuna Taguchi’s work explores the illusory nature of the media age – what lies beneath the smooth and immaculate images is in fact the appropriation and collage of a jumble of elements. Yeondoo Jung’s piece also questions the boundary between real and unreal in the contemporary context. Using old family photos as a basis, Vivan Sundaram inserts family members of different generations into them, redefining the relationship between photographic record and history. Mauro Restiffe flew to Taipei a few months ago to create his work on-the-spot and was astonished by the sight of troops of motorcyclists in Taipei. He offers us a shocking view of life in this city. Based on the simulation of the military action of the Iraq War at a South Californian military training base, An-my Lê creates a satirical work that recalls scenes from Hollywood war movies.
There are also a number of topical works in the Biennial. A sensation at the last Venice Biennale, Francesco Vezzoli will present another stunning work, turning himself into a Hollywood AV actor and creating a simulated biography of his life. Chinese artist Cao Fei’s father was a sculptor who created a statue of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. She will organize a solo exhibition of her father’s work at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and use “Dr. Sun Yat-sen” to reconnect the two Chinas that have severed communication. The group TAKE2030 uses wireless internet access to subvert the authority of information. They will set up a workshop at the museum to teach the audience how to make porta packs for the wireless transmission of messages, as well as encourage Taipei residents to open up their own wireless internet access to counter the monopoly of information. Lee Bul will show an architectural model resembling the world of the future to evoke a surreal feeling to reflect the overexpansion of the technological world.
The Taiwanese artists in this Biennial show a multidisciplinary selection. The doujinshi cartoonist VIVA will paint large murals in the exhibition venue and show his miscellaneous four-frame comics created over the years in 120 drawers. Taxi driver Meng-te Chou who is also a painter will present a comprehensive selection of his works painted from life over more than a decade portraying night scenes in bars for the first time. His paintings reflect urban-rural differences and the search for an identity. Renowned documentary filmmaker Chun-hui Wu will show a new documentary film created by turning still photos of different specifications into a moving picture. E Chen, who has an architectural background, has produced a new wool-knitting conceptual installation to explore the relationship between the declining Taiwanese textile industry and the globalized economy. Hong-kai Wang who lives in the US will use a sound installation in the museum courtyard café with pre-recorded sounds of footsteps to interpret the relationship between footsteps and place. Through the concept of changing the original uses of objects, Arthur Ou will examine the connection between objects and history.
Just like the works of the artists invited to this Biennial, they are participating in a synthesizing task, either in search of a subjective identity or attempting to break the conventions in order to obtain the driving force of existence. In short, this year’s Biennial proposes views about the environment and identity that differ from the conventional views through the works featuring diverse modes of expression. Through multiple critiques and synthesis, it creates the possibility of other kinds of thinking. The artists participating in it are trying to build a more autonomous and pluralistic new space, even though it may just be a distant utopia.
We thank the Council for Cultural Affairs, Executive Yuan, the Taipei City Government and the Cultural Affairs Bureau of Taipei for the support they have given to this exhibition. We also express our sincere thanks to the following organizations and enterprises for their sponsorship and assistance: Shiseido Taiwan, the American Institute in Taiwan, the Asian Cultural Council, the Deutsches Kulturzentrum, the Institut fuer Auslandsbeziehungen e.V. (ifa), International Artists Studio Program in Sweden (IASPIS), the Italian Economic, Trade and Cultural Promotion Office, Direccion General de Relaciones Culturales Científicas, the State Corporation for Spanish Cultural Action Abroad and OmniAd Media.
Alexandre Arrechea (Cuba/Spain)
Cao Fei (曹斐,China)
E Chen (陳逸堅,Taiwan)
Meng-te Chou (周孟德,Taiwan)
Jonas Dahlberg (Sweden)
El Perro (Spain)
Katharina Grosse (Germany)
Fengyi Guo (郭鳳怡,China)
Subodh Gupta (India)
Emily Jacir (Palestine/US)
Yeondoo Jung (Korea)
An-My Le (Vietnam/US)
Lee Bul (Korea)
Nalini Malani (India)
Yuko Murata (Japan)
Eko Nugroho (Indonesia)
Damian Ortega (Mexico)
Arthur Ou(歐宗翰, Taiwan/US)
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook (Thailand)
Mauro Restiffe (Brazil)
Robin Rhode (S. Africa/Germany)
Carolee Schneemann (US)
Shahzia Sikander (Pakistan/US)
Regina Silveira (Brazil)
Valeska Soares (Brazil)
Jennifer Steinkamp (US)
Vivan Sundaram (India)
Kazuna Taguchi (Japan)
Take2030(UK)
Koki Tanaka (Japan)
Francesco Vezzoli (Italy)
VIVA (Taiwan)
Hong-kai Wang(王虹凱,Taiwan/ US)
Nari Ward (Jamaica/US)
Chun-hui Wu (吳俊輝,Taiwan)
The Taipei Biennial Forum will invite international experts and scholars to hold separate discussions on topics such as artists, curatorial practice, commissioning and collecting over a one-day period (November 5th).
Participating speakers and sections include:
Artist Forum: participating artists of 2006 Taipei Biennial:
Moderated by Dan Cameron / Curator, 2006 Taipei Biennial
1. Alex Arrechea / Artist (Cuba)
2. E Chen / Artist (Taiwan)
3. Vivan Sundaram / Artist (India)
4. Nari Ward / Artist (Jamaica/US)
5. Regina Silveira / Artist (Brazil)
Curators Forum
Moderated by Wang Jun-Jieh / Curator, 2006 Taipei Biennial
1. Manray Hsu / Curator, 2000 Taipei Biennial (Taiwan)
2. Yuko Hasegawa / Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (Japan)
3. Barbara VanderLinden / Curator, 2004 Taipei Biennial (Belgium)
4. Tsong-zung Johnson Chang / Independent curator (H.K.)
Commissioning and Collecting Forum
Moderated by Fumio Nanjo / Director, Mori Art Museum (Japan)
1. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev / Chief Curator Castello di Rivoli Museum, Turin and Artistic Director, Biennial of Sydney 2008 (Italy)
2. Sunjung Kim / Independent curator (Korea)
3. Jeff Hsu / Chairman, Art Galleries Association R.O.C (Taiwan)
4. Dan Cameron / Curator, 2006 Taipei Biennial
Dan Cameron has been active since 1980 and has attained successful international recognition. In 1988, he was invited to be the first-ever US commissioner for the “Aperto” section of the Biennale di Venezia. Major exhibitions he has curated include “Art & its Double” (1986), “Cocido y Crudo” (1994) and the 8th Istanbul Biennial “Poetic Justice” (2003). Cameron also served as Senior Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art since 1995. Cameron is one of the most widely published art critics in the world, with various books, magazine and catalog essays to his credit. His writings appear regularly in Artforum, Flash Art, Parkett, and trans.og. He serves also on the graduate teaching faculty of Columbia University, New York University and School of Visual Arts.
Jun-Jieh Wang graduated from the Art Academy Berlin in 1996. He is a noted Taiwanese media artist who doubles as a curator. One of Taiwan's pioneers in video art, he has participated in various international exhibitions, including “Kwangju Biennial” (1995), “Venice Biennial” (1997), “Cities on the Move” (1997), “Asia-Pacific Triennial” (1997), “Taipei Biennial” (1998, 2000) etc. He was selected by the Japanese art magazine “Bijutsu Techo” as one of the “100 notable artists in 2000”. His major curatorial projects includes “Navigator: Digital Art in the Making” (2004), “The Post-Stone Age” (2005), “B!AS : International Sound Art Exhibition” (2005) etc. Wang also teaches at the art department at National Changhua University of Education and Taipei National University of the Arts.
November 4, 2006