The 20th Taishin Arts Award announces the three laureates of its 20th iteration in a joyfully festive ceremony interspersed with nervousness which peaked at the moment of announcing the winners. The founder of the Award Chairman Thomas WU of the Taishin Holdings gave an opening remark. Pointing out that the 30th anniversary of the Taishin Bank coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Taishin Arts Award, he stated that “the Taishin Arts Award supports Taiwanese artists with substantial prize money, assisting artists to shine on the stage, while guiding the direction of the Taiwanese arts and cultural scene.” He especially expressed his gratitude to LIN Mun-Lee, a board member of the Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture. When revealing the Grand Prize winner, LIN also expressed rather touchingly that “throughout the past twenty years, whether the situation was favorable or not, Chairman WU has steadfastly and determinedly supported art so that the Taishin Arts Award can still exist today and continue marching into the future.”
The seven-juror final selection committee of this iteration is chaired by Amy CHENG, together with two nomination committee members, as well as four external jurors. After a marathon of intensive discussion that lasted two days, the laureates of the Visual Arts Award and the Performing Arts Award, each with a prize money of 1 million NTD, and that of the Grand Prize, with a prize money of 1.5 million NTD, are finally announced.
The Grand Prize: Mr. Wing Theatre Company / A Journey towards Sentiment (kanshooryokoo)─My Endless Melancholy Becomes Siberia Comprised of Oblivion After You Left for the Southern Villages.
The Visual Arts Award: Yi Fan Li / howdoyouturnthison─2021 Asian Art Biennial.
The Performing Arts Award: Body Phase Studio & Mr. Wing Theatre Company / Prince Hamlet.
The Visual Arts Award goes to video and new media artist LI Yi Fan and his howdoyouturnthison─2021 Asian Art Biennial. Using game engine as his artistic instrument, LI created a humorous image narrative approach that is imbued with the potential to explore various issues. The jury committee gave the following comment regarding his work: “howdoyouturnthison responds to the genes of the digital age and its mutated memories with unique black humor. LI overturns the historical toolbox of ‘machinima,’ skillfully manipulating his avatar that wriggles without physical constraints.”
The Performing Arts Award was awarded to Body Phase Studio and Mr. Wing Theatre Company for their co-production – Prince Hamlet, a solo performance staged at Guling Street Avant-garde Theatre. Regarding this work, the jury committee gave the following comment: “Prince Hamlet is a solo interpretation of Hamlet by actor and playwright YANG Qi-Yin by bringing in the 318 Occupation Movement in Taiwan; it reflects on the beliefs and disillusion of the rebels’ various struggles and the deployment of power.”
The Grand Prize was awarded to Mr. Wing Theatre Company’s A Journey towards Sentiment (kanshooryokoo)─My Endless Melancholy Becomes Siberia Comprised of Oblivion After You Left for the Southern Villages. With a context that was both poetic and prosaic, director LI Huan-Hsiung combined TSUEI Tai-Ho’s solo performance and the elongated, extending space of Guling Street Avant-garde Theatre to produce a dialectic work, interweaving drama, literature, and politics. The jury committee’s comment: “The work interweaves the life pursuit of CHEN Ying-Zhen as a novelist, his fictional characters, and theatre practitioner M in a skillful manifestation of the aesthetic succession and transformation of Taiwan’s contemporary theatre.”
Coincidentally, the two award-winning performing arts works were both staged at Guling Street Avant-garde Theatre, which was only re-opened last year after three years of renovation. The first-time laureate, Mr. Wing Theatre Company, brings home the Grand Prize and the Performing Arts Award respectively with an independent production and a co-production with Body Phase Studio. Indeed, this achievement has an epoch-making significance to the Taishin Arts Award and Taiwanese experimental theater.
Visit the website of the 20th Taishin Arts Award.
