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...
Collectors’ Favorites is an episode of local cable program from the mid-1990s in which ordinary people were invited to present their personal collections—a concept that in many ways anticipates current reality TV shows and internet videos...
The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
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...
Visalia Livestock Market, Visalia, California results from Lockhart’s prolonged investigation of an agricultural center and community...
With a habit of reading eight to ten books at the same time, Chong paints his two-foot tall novel covers through referencing an extensive reading list (accessible on Facebook) he has kept since 2006...
Lockhart’s film Lunch Break investigates the present state of American labor through a close look at the everyday life of the workers at the Bath Iron Works shipyard—a private sector of the U...
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...
Behind the simplicity and beauty of this untitled photograph of a brilliantly-colored flowerbed by Félix González-Torres are two remarkable stories of love, loss, and resilience...
Charwai Tsai’s photograph documents her Hermit Crab Project installation upon the construction site of gallery Sora in Tokyo...
The American War , which takes its title from the Vietnamese term for what Americans call the Vietnam War, has toured the United States extensively with the goal of presenting a Vietnamese perspective of that history...
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 Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
Herculine’s Prophecy by Juliana Huxtable features a kneeling demon-figure on what appears to be a screen-print, placed on a wooden table, which has then been photographed and digitally altered to appear like a book cover, with a title and subtitle across the top, and a poem written across the bottom...