Sculpture (Sculpture)

Taiwan WMD (Taiwan and Weapons of Mass Destruction) is part of a long-term research started in early 2010 on the history and aftermath effects of Japanese biological and chemical warfare in China during WWII, as well as the unknown history of Taiwan’s nuclear program. T. Hong’s research is not only an effort to revisit a dark time that complicates certain histories, but more importantly an investigation of how violence is enacted in the name of rationality.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In Akira Takayama’s work Happy Island – The Messianic Banquet of the Righteous , five video screens perpendicular to the floor feature footage of cows grazing and resting in the rolling hills of a farmland. Renamed ‘The Farm of Hope’ by owner Masami Yoshizawa, the property is located 14 kilometers away from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, and is part of a now restricted area that became highly contaminated with radiation after an earthquake and tsunami caused leaks from the plant in 2011. Most of the livestock in the restricted areas have either starved to death after being abandoned by their owners or have suffered from the effects of radiation.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In the video, the artist follows her grandmother, Aldona, during her daily walk through the Grutas Park in Lithuania. Founded ten years after the collapse of USSR, this privately-owned sculpture park features close to a hundred Soviet-era statues collected from all over the country. As similar statues were often taken down or destroyed in neighboring Soviet countries, the sculpture park became a unique yet controversial resource.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Bady Dalloul’s Scrapbook is a 48 minute video beginning from his birth, tracing major global events of the 20 th century, including the beginning and current Occupation and colonization of Palestine, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, assassination of family members and the Syrian diaspora. A voice over follows these moments as the camera traces over the collage that includes text; photos; postcards; origami birds; and inserted videos of world leaders. The film is a letter to the viewer, imploring the witnessing of what we assume, but cannot know, to be the artist speaking.