Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina
The Video, the Island and Difficulties of Re-Identity: Taiwan
Artists: Yao Jui-Chung, Li Kuei-Pi, Wu Chi-Yu, Au Sow Yee, Ciwas Tahos, Lin Shu-Kai
Curator: Nobuo Takamori
August 7 – September 6, 2023
Opening: August 7 at 20:00
Opening Hours
Tuesday - Friday, 11:00 - 15:00
August 9 at 19:00
Film School Program
The Difficulties of Re-Identity: Video Art and Experimental Moving Images from Taiwan
Screening curated by Nobuo Takamori
The Boxing Club, Mark Isaku 8, 10000 Prishtina, Republic of Kosovo
Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina and Summer School as School are pleased to present the exhibition “The Video, the Island and Difficulties of Re-Identity: Taiwan”, curated by Nobuo Takamori, featuring artists Yao Jui-Chung, Li Kuei-Pi, Wu Chi-Yu, Au Sow Yee, Ciwas Tahos, Lin Shu-Kai and screening The Difficulties of Re-Identity: video art and experimental moving images from Taiwan, followed by a presentation by Nobuo Takamori.
The exhibition and the screening program are part of the ongoing collaboration between Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina and selected curators, art historians, artists and institutions in Taiwan. The Video, the Island and Difficulties of Re-Identity: Taiwan is the first iteration of the collaboration in Kosovo, focusing mainly on video art as a visual and audio medium in art.
Taiwan is one of the first countries in Asia to develop video art. Since the 1980s, video art has become one of the most common materials for Taiwanese artists. Moreover, the history of Taiwanese experimental film can be traced back to earlier times. In the 21st century, the boundary between Taiwanese video art and experimental film has gradually blurred, and “moving images / time-based images” have become an interdisciplinary form of artistic expression.
Taiwan's very existence is often seen as a problem. Taiwan's multicultural and complex history is based on the fundament of Austronesian culture. Yet it has experienced colonial rule by the Dutch East Company, Spain, the Manchurian Qing Empire, Japan, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), creating a complex historical identity. This type of complexity entangles Taiwan's political status today while shaping Taiwan's cultural character. In addressing this difficulty of self-identity, artists have developed various narratives that deconstruct history. Whether it is the perspectives of indigenous artists, recalling the legacy of the Japanese colonial period, or reflecting on the experience of the “White Terror” era, artists intertwine images and narratives in their works through deconstruction, re-creation, symbolism, and poetic expression.
This thematic special exhibition, accompanied by the screening program The Difficulties of Re-Identity: Video Arts / Experimental Moving Images from Taiwan, at Summer School as School 2023 in Kosovo, curated by Taiwanese curator Nobuo Takamori, selects the works of 6 Taiwan-based artists. They come from different generations, genders, and ethnic groups, but their works are full of insights into Taiwan's past and present, and even extend the methodology experimented in Taiwan to Southeast Asia and other parts of Asia, developing a unique visual esthetic that emerges from Taiwan's identity dilemma.
Biographies of artists and the curator:
Yao Jui-Chung was born in 1969. Lives and works in Taipei. Graduated from The Taipei National University of the Arts with a degree in Art Theory. His works has been widely exhibited in numerous international exhibitions. In 1997, he represented Taiwan at the Venice Biennale. After that, he took part in the International Triennale of Contemporary Art Yokohama(2005), APT6(2009), Shanghai Biennale(2012), Beijing Photo Biennale(2013), Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale, Venice Architecture Biennale, Media City Seoul Biennale, Asia Triennial Manchester(2014), Asia Biennale(2015), Sydney Biennale(2016), Shanghai Biennale(2018), 14th Curitiba International Biennial of Contemporary Art(2019), XIII Krasnoyarsk Museum Biennale(2019), Taipei biennial(2020)and Jakarta Biennale(2021). Yao is the winner of The Multitude Art Prize(Hong Kong) in 2013 and 2014 Asia pacific Art Prize(Singapore). 2018 is the winner of Taishin Arts Award(Taiwan). We can also find him widely involved in the fields of theatre and films.
Yao is the winner of The Multitude Art Prize in 2013 and 2014 Asia pacific Art Prize. Yao specializes in photography, installation and painting. The themes of his works are varied, but most importantly they all examine the absurdity of the human condition. Yao has assembled all the black-and-white photos of ruins he took in the past 30 years, grouped under the themes of industry, religious idols, architecture, and military bases. They reveal the enormous ideological black hole in Taiwan hidden behind the trends of globalization and Taiwan’s specific historical background as a continuation of the main theme of his work: the absurdity of the historical destiny of humanity. Since 2010, Yao grouped his students into a team of photography workshop called “"Lost Society Document” "(LSD). He encouraged them to photograph and survey in their hometowns. Through the way of field surveys, they have attempt to draw the outline of “mosquito houses” which have been widely criticized, published five books named “Mirage: Disused Public Property in Taiwan” and practice looked into the possibility of observing the society by through the meaning of Art.
He has also published several books. His works have been collected by lots of public museum and many other private collectors. Now is Adjunct Professor at the National Taiwan Normal University Department of Fine Arts, Principal of VT Art salon & The Illusion studio.
Li Kuei-Pi was born in Tainan in 1991. She received her MFA from Taipei National University of the Arts in 2017, and currently lives in Taipei. Her work engages in transnational mobility and labor experience, in which she converts objects created from labor and intervenes in the labor process, transforming the meaning of the products to convey her critical viewpoints about the modern material world.
Li specializes in utilizing objects from the site of labor work before employing means of imitation, reproduction and remaking to entrap the audience in her elaborately conceived works, in which the audience become performers as well as part of the exhibited works. Meanwhile, she makes use of historical clues embedded in the objects to include issues related to the identity of different communities in her discussion about production systems. For the artist, history is not simply a string of linearly associated events but the result formed through a gradually changing process of production systems. The changes in the latter also indicate changes in techniques and instruments. Therefore, one of her constant focus is how to incorporate these changes into her creations while involving the audience in the completion of these works.
Wu Chi-Yu (b. 1986, Taipei) is a multimedia artist whose works include photography, film, and video installation. He delves into the lost and unestablished links among species, environment, and the technology that constructs human civilization, exploring the complex historical geography of Asia and the interdependence of various beings through multiple narratives. His works have been exhibited and screened at Times Art Museum, Guangzhou (2021); MoCA, Taipei (2020); 2018 Shanghai Biennale; 2016 Taipei Biennial; Beijing International Short Film Festival (2017) and was a resident artist at Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (2014-2015).
Born and grew up in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Au Sow Yee now lives and works in Taipei (Taiwan). Her works were exhibited in 2023 Sharjah Biennale, 2022 Busan Biennale, MMCA (Seoul), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), HKW (Berlin), Shanghai Rockbund Art Museum, Singapore Film Festival, BACC (Bangkok) and various other exhibitions and screenings. Sow Yee co-founded Kuala Lumpur’s Rumah Attap Library and Collective in 2017.
Anchi Lin [Ciwas Tahos] is a visual artist with performance and new media art practice, she is of Taiwanese Indigenous Atayal and Hō-ló descent and is based in Taipei, Taiwan. Following a Bachelor of Fine Art in Visual Art at Simon Fraser University (Canada), Lin is currently undertaking a Master of Fine Art in New Media Art at the Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA). Through her practice and interest in language, identity, gender, and the environment, Lin seeks out new forms of understanding beyond the hetero-patriarchal status quo, using video, performance, cyberspace, and installation.
She is the curator of the 2023 ADAM Artist Lab from the Taipei Performing Art Center. Her recent significant work Pswagi Temahahoi was in the Wagiwagi Project as part of Kassel Documenta 15th (Indonesia/Germany) Perhaps She Comes From/To__Alang in Phantasmapolis Asian Art Biennale, 2021(Taiwan); The Land in the Middle of the Pond commissioned by the Green Island Human Rights Art Festival, 2021.
Lin Shu-Kai, was born in Tainan, Taiwan in 1983, Lin Shu-Kai graduated from the Department of Fine Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts, from which he also earned a master's degree. He currently lives in Tainan.
Graphic art and spatial installation are the staple forms of Lin's oeuvre. Tainan, the place in which Lin came of age, is an ancient capital bristling with temples, serpentine lanes, and religious totems. The artist internalized these visual elements and spatial experiences, dismantling and reassembling the constituents of his personal life and epiphanies, thereby excavating the symbols buried deep within his subconscious. These symbols in a claborate style gradually formed fantastic buildings that embody the cities and islands in his imagination, which resulted in his sui generis art series Balcony City Civilization. Apart from creating images with religious implications, the artist seeks to turn the wooden molds left in his father's factory into models of futuristic city, so as to reveal the myriad metamorphoses of cities and islands. He has been invited to international and domestic large-scale exhibitions at Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Asian Culture Center (South Korea) and Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (Japan). He has also worked as an artist-in-residence and presented his works in Germany, the United States, the Netherlands, and Thailand.
Nobuo Takamori is an independent curator; Director of “Outsiders Factory”, a curators collective; selected important exhibition curatorial works include “Post-Actitud” (2011, Ex Teresa Arte Actual, Mexico DF), “South country, South of Country” (2012, Zero Station, Ho Chi Minh City & Howl Space, Tainan), “The Lost Garden” (2014, Eslite Gallery, Taipei), Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition 2014 “The Return of Ghosts” (Hong Gah Museum, Taipei), “Is/In-Land: Mongolian Taiwanese Contemporary Art Exchange Project” (2018, 976 Art Gallery, Ulaanbaatar, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei), “The Middleman, the Backpacker, the Alien Species and the Time Traveler” (2019, TKG+, Taipei), and “The Secret South: from Cold War Perspective to Global South in Museum Collection” (2019, TFAM, Taipei).
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The Video, the Island and Difficulties of Re-Identity: Taiwan and the screening program The Difficulties of Re-Identity: video art and experimental moving images from Taiwan, followed by a presentation by Nobuo Takamori are supported generously by Chew’s Culture Foundation, Hong Gah Museum, Solid Art.
Summer School as School 2023 was generously supported by Trust for Mutual Understating - TMU, New York. Summer School as School 2023 was supported by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports of the Republic of Kosovo, Municipality of Prishtina, Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of the Republic of Kosovo, Student’s Center of the Universtity of Prishtina Hasan Prishtina, Faculty of Architecture of the University of Prishtina Hasan Prishtina, Network of Independent Art and Cultural Institutions - RRIPAK, Syrrush, Vidasus, X-Print and DZG.
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Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina
The Video, the Island and Difficulties of Re-Identity: Taiwan
Artists: Yao Jui-Chung, Li Kuei-Pi, Wu Chi-Yu, Au Sow Yee, Ciwas Tahos, Lin Shu-Kai
Curator: Nobuo Takamori
Exhibition Architecture: Albert Heta and Vala Osmani
Production: Laureta Hajrullahu, Edvina Musaj, Erdonit Saqipi, Qëndresa Zeka, Manushaqe Ibrahimi, Rinesa Gashi
Installation: Skender Xhukolli, Erdonit Saqipi, Fitim Haziri