6:30 minutes
Marshal Tie Jia (Turtle Island) explores the history of a tiny island off of the coast of Matsu in the Taiwan Strait that has been instrumental in the geopolitical relationships between China, Taiwan, and Japan. The Chinese frog deity, Marshal Tie Jia, is now exiled to the island where he is still revered by the Taiwanese people. The installation includes documentation of the artist’s correspondence with the frog deity placed upon an altar, while the video explores both Marshal’s birthplace in China and his current home on Turtle Island. The video slowly zooms out from a fabricated version of Marshal’s former temple, which was dismantled then rebuilt on another island by dictator Chiang Kai-Shek when he retreated to Taiwan. As the video zooms out, it reveals the edges of the green screen, calling attention to the nation state’s production of the mythological narratives that play a persistent role in forming cultural identities. Image, text, and installation obscure the lines between truth and myth to establish a new mythology of representation.
Embarking from myriad audio-visual narratives, Chia-Wei Hsu pursues imaginative interrogations of cultural contact and colonization in Asia, oftentimes amalgamating his primary narratives with non-human actors including technologies, animals, gods, environments, traditions, and material objects. Bringing these diverse subjects together results in a bumpy ontological bleed between them, forming the topography of a historical geography without a straightforward objective position. By reinterrogating what histories and relations coexist within a given locale, Hsu’s work manifests new imaginative potentialities for their revitalization, an uncertain, profound terrain throughout his films and installations. While his work has consistently probed regulatory systems including religion, science, architecture, and military action, Hsu’s work has increasingly explored digital ontologies and the Internet of Things, in which previously luddite household objects have become connected to the internet. The digital, as a territorializing field produced by components largely manufactured in Asia, allows Hsu to attempt the detournement of western knowledge-bases to formulate new, imaginative archipelagos.
Weekly Picks: Indonesia (25 February - 3 March 2019) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Weekly To Do February 25, 2019 Top Picks of Indonesia art events in Bali and Jakarta from 25 February – 3 March 2019 At Sudakara Art Space in Bali, Arya Trimini Putra is attempting to create 1000 paintings in 30 days and you can participate in this record-breaking attempt...
Part of the exhibition PIÑA MATRIZ (2014) at Despacio Art, this untitled work by Carlos Fernández is a wood panel (formerly a section of a wooden table top) that bears the residue of insects interacting with fermented pineapple...
Resiliencia Tlacuache / Opossum Resilience by Naomi Ricón Gallardo is a fabulation in which four characters find themselves in temporalities that overlap Mesoamerican narratives about the creation of the world with the contemporary time of accumulation by dispossession...
Miami Advice: Nina Johnson on the Spear House of North Bayshore Drive Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Art Basel in Miami Beach 2023 interview Miami Advice: Nina Johnson on the Spear House of North Bayshore Drive The gallerist says that the pretty-in-pink property exudes the quintessential 1980s South Florida vibe that still resonates today Tim Schneider 7 December 2023 Share Laurinda Spear’s original plan, created with Rem Koolhaas, was rejected by the client: her parents Photo: Elizabeth Whiting Located at 9325 North Bayshore Drive, in the Miami Shores neighbourhood, the Spear House (aka the Pink House) looms large in the cultural imagination of South Florida...
In Pieces - Photographs by Sophia Bulgakova, Lia Dostlieva, Ola Lanko, Katia Motyleva and Kateryna Snizhko | Book review by Sophie Wright | LensCulture Feature In Pieces In this imaginative collection of photobooks “made with a child in mind,” five artists of Ukrainian descent explore the everyday heroism of life in wartime...
Josiah McElheny’s Glass Art Reflects the Human Condition Skip to content Josiah McElheny, "From the Library of Future Geometries I" (2023) (all images courtesy James Cohan Gallery) For decades, Josiah McElheny has created formally stunning and technically perfect artworks, mostly of glass, in a modernist style derived from mathematical ordering systems...
How Gagosian's east London Christo show proved the power of the pop-up exhibition Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Art market comment How Gagosian's east London Christo show proved the power of the pop-up exhibition Who says something eye-catching and short-term can’t also be serious? Melanie Gerlis 7 December 2023 Share Installation view of Christo's Dolly (1964) at Gagosian Open, 4 Princelet Street, October 2023 © Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation Even as new galleries seem to open faster than ever, there is plenty of movement away from the white cube...
Investigation by Portuguese newspaper reveals grappling between politicians and museums over future of Kwer’ata Re’esu Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Looted art news Investigation by Portuguese newspaper reveals grappling between politicians and museums over future of Kwer’ata Re’esu Disagreement centred over whether the painting, looted in 1868 and later sold to a private collector in Portugal, should be bought by the government and returned to Ethopia Martin Bailey 5 February 2024 Share The remarkably well-preserved Kwer’ata Re’esu was taken during the British military offensive in Ethiopia in 1868 Photo: © Martin Bailey, The Art Newspaper...
The video animation Falling Head 2 , hand-painted by Diego Marcon in 2015, consists of a close-up of a head caught on the threshold between sleep and wakefulness or maybe from wakefulness to sleep...
Those Long Haired Nights: Filipino film highlights struggle for transgender rights (via SEA Globe) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles September 17, 2018 With its true-to-life representation of transgender sex workers in Manila, Gerardo Calagui’s 2017 film Those Long Haired Nights is not afraid to court controversy...
Tropical Vulture is a cross-generational project which highlights the artistic influences between George Kuchar, a Bay Area legend of independent filmmaking, and Mexican artist Miguel Calderón...
Randa Maroufi’s Bab Sebta , is named after a Spanish enclave in Morocco, Ceuta...
This painting is the direct result of the artist’s research into her roots...
Various & Gould Go to Church to Spread Colorful “Strahlen” with Project “Startbahn” | Brooklyn Street Art BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY In the heart of Berlin-Neukölln, the Genezareth Church , a neo-Gothic tower with a history as rich and intricate as the city itself, stands renewed and vibrant, thanks to the artistic duo Various and Gould...
Liu Wei: China’s Trickster Mixer-Upper – ARTnews.com Skip to main content By Barbara Pollack Plus Icon Barbara Pollack View All February 26, 2014 5:00am When the Rubell Family Collection opened its doors with an exhibition of 28 Chinese artists in time for Art Basel Miami Beach last December, one of the stars that emerged from the show was Liu Wei , whose brand of geometric abstraction surprised many Americans looking for more stereotypical hallmarks of Chinese art ...