The prestigious contemporary art award in Taiwan—the Taishin Arts Award, announces the winners of the three major awards of the 21st edition on May 27. Curator Nobuo Takamori, who has endeavored in studying the culture of the Global South, is awarded the Visual Arts Award with The Oceans and the Interpreters. Chen-Wei Lee, who has been nominated four times in seven years, and her husband, choreographer VAKULYA Zoltán, bring home the Performing Arts Award with Burnt [the eternal long now]. Jo-Hung Tang’s Jo-Hung Tang: As You Sleep Worry-Free—From Pandemic to War: About disaster crisis like a celebration in one or two different cook methods stands out from the seventeen finalists, and wins the Grand Prize, becoming the very first to ever win the Grand Prize with two-dimensional painting in the history of the Taishin Arts Award.
After three years of the pandemic, the final selection committee this year once again invites experts from Taiwan and abroad. Chaired by artist Yuki Pan, members of the committee include art historian TSENG Shao-Chien, theater critic WU Sih-Fong, art consultant CHOW Ling-Chih, and three international jurors, namely, German performing arts curator, Dieter Jaenicke, senior curator of the Yokohama Museum of Art, Eriko Kimura, and the director of the Hong Kong Art School, Louis Yu. After a three-day meeting marathon with extensive discussions, the winners of the three major awards, with a total prize money of three and a half million dollars, are finally selected.
The Visual Arts Award winner—The Oceans and the Interpreters—is a research-based exhibition on view at both Hong-gah Museum and Solid Art. The curator Nobuo Takamori invites over twenty artists from Africa and Asia to not only introduce African and Caribbean art to an Asian audience, but to also explore the aspects of politics, culture, and national identity in regional exchange through the featured works. The jury gives the following comments “Nobuo Takamori and his artists team are opening the artistic horizon to interconnections between Taiwan and Africa, finding relations, common interests in the most diverse cultural identities.”
The Performing Arts Award goes to Burnt [the eternal long now], co-choreographed by Chen-Wei Lee and Zoltán Vakulya for the 2022 Artquake In Autumn festival hosted by the National Theater. In this work, three dancers constitute a metaphor for a society to explore the sensitive, fragile mental state of contemporary people. The jury gives the following comments “The choreographers boldly face the burnt state and transform negative mental and physical signs into a unique body language, aptly conveying a bolstering and collaborating relationship.”
The Grand Prize announced finally is awarded to Jo-Hung Tang for his Jo-Hung Tang: As You Sleep Worry-Free—From Pandemic to War: About disaster crisis like a celebration in one or two different cook methods. Exhibited at Mind Set Art Center, the exhibition theme reflects the changes of the artist’s lifestyle and creative state of mind in the past few years during the pandemic. The jury gives the comments ”Jo-hung Tang, through his accomplished artistic expressions, offers astute insights into the distance between disasters and the daily life of the layperson. His unique and humorous aesthetic politics make this distance feel as close as an absurd drama.”
The three award-winning works, in terms of the creative origin or creative process, have hinted at the individual state of mind, interpersonal interactions, and the collective physical and mental state under the impact of the pandemic. During the long periods of pandemic-induced home confinement, Jo-Hung Tang and Chen-Wei Lee have both developed new artistic vocabularies derived from the changes of reality in relation to self-reflection on the body and mind as well as interactions between family members. Nobuo Takamori’s overseas curatorial and research projects were disrupted by the pandemic, making international exchange impossible. However, he was able to extend new dialogues and connections in Taiwan, which eventually presented a fresh curatorial opportunity.
The 21st Taishin Arts Award website.
