174H x 105W centimeters
Empire’s Borders II – Passage and Empire’s Borders II – Workers are from the three-channel film installation Empire’s Borders II – Western Enterprise, Inc. (2010), which takes as its point of departure the political context of the 1950s and the Cold War, when American interests in Taiwan overlapped with the Chinese civil war. Cooperating with the Chinese Kuomintang, the American CIA established something called Western Enterprises, an agency whose main tasks included training an anti-Communist National Salvation Army (NSA) for a surprise attack on Communists in mainland China and establishing Taiwan as a base for anti-Communist operations in Southeast Asia. Narrated from the point of the view of the artist’s father, once a member of the NSA, the project interweaves personal experience with historical events. The restaged ruins of the old Western Enterprise base have a haunting atmosphere, silently recounting the complex history of Taiwanese-American relations in an era of global tensions and conflicts.
One of the most established artists working in Taiwan today, Chen Chieh-Jen creates highly politically charged works that are deeply rooted in his homeland, examining the modern history of Taiwan within the larger context of globalization. Through the visual language of video and photography, he explores collective memories, perceptions, and historical constructions that are closely related to the recent rise of neoliberalism. The work resists the existing “logic” of history writing by looking into past events in depth. It also imagines and proposes new forms of history with democratic potential—histories that counter official ideologies and are actually written by the people.
Los rastreadores is a two-channel video by Claudia Joskowicz narrating the story of a fictitious drug lord, Ernesto Suarez, whose character is based on the well-known Bolivian drug dealer, Roberto Suárez...
The primary interest in the trilogy is Joskowicz’s use of cinematic space, with long tracking shots that portray resistance to habitual viewing experiences of film and television...
Charwai Tsai’s photograph documents her Hermit Crab Project installation upon the construction site of gallery Sora in Tokyo...
Pak created New York Public Library Projects (NYPLP) (2008) during a residency in New York, using public libraries as exhibition spaces and the books they house as raw materials...
Created for the tenth Lyon Bienniale, in Days of Our Lives: Playing for Dying Mother, Wong’s ongoing negotiation of postcolonial globalization takes aim at French society...
After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective...
Tino Sehgal’s This Exhibition requires an interpreter (in this particular piece, a gallery attendant) to faux faint each and every time a visitor enters into a given space...
The series Nightmare Wallpapers represents a shift if Chuen’s practice, allowing the artist to immerse himself in an “artistic pilgrimage of self healing” following the failure of the 2014 Umbrella Movement...
The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
Nicolas Paris studied architecture and worked as an elementary school teacher before he decided to become an artist...
In the work titled The Glossies (1980), an affinity for photography manifested itself before McCollum actually began to use photography as a medium...
Re: Looking marks a new phase in Wong’s work which connects his region’s history with other parts of the world...
Some Dead Don’t Make a Sound (Hay muertos que no hacen ruido) is a single-channel video by Claudia Joskowicz that features the Mexican legend of the Weeping Woman (La Llorona) as its main protagonist...
The first iteration of Flutter was specifically conceived for the Pro Arts Gallery space in Oakland in 2010, viewable from the public space of a sidewalk, and the version acquired by the Kadist Collection is an adaptation of it...
After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective...
Untitled (Women) (2011) presents a startlingly succinct history of violently romanticized femininity...
Days of Our Lives: Reading is from a series of work was created for the 10th Biennale de Lyon by the artist...
Bowers’ Radical Hospitality (2015) is a sculptural contradiction: its red and blue neon letters proclaim the words of the title, signaling openness and generosity, while the barbed wires that encircle the words give another message entirely...