The Taipei Fine Arts Museum Celebrates Its 40th Anniversary and Announces the Highlights of 2024

The Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM), as Taiwan’s first modern and contemporary art museum, ushers in its 40th anniversary by announcing the special performance event for the 2023 TFAM Day today, and officially launches the “TFAM Exhibition Archive” to trace the abundant results accumulated during first decade after the museum’s inauguration. Meanwhile, the TFAM announces the highlights in the upcoming year of 2024, including three major flagship exhibitions, solo exhibitions of artists from different generations, research exhibitions featuring the TFAM collection, and a new online project, continuously fostering the momentum that propels the development of art.

In 2023, the TFAM offers a multifaceted feast of art to the audience with diverse exhibitions. Among the exhibitions of 2023, Re-Present: Kao Chung-Li received critical acclaims and has been nominated for the 22nd Taishin Art Awards. The Wild Eighties: Dawn of a Transdisciplinary Taiwan and A One and A Two: Edward Yang Retrospective are voted the “Top 10 Best Exhibitions” by Artist magazine. A One and A Two: Edward Yang Retrospective and “Program X-site” are listed “Top 10 Creative Exhibitions” and “Top 10 Creative Platforms” by the La Vie Creative Awards 100. The Garden sponsored by the Museum Friends Association and AVEDA is also awarded the Annual Creative Award at the 16th Arts and Business Award. In addition to being recognized for the exhibitions/projects, the TFAM has also received nearly one hundred donated works and archives, including ink paintings, watercolors, and oils, which collectively expands the museum’s collection to almost 6,000 pieces of art. The donated works include classic paintings respectively by established artists Liu Sin-Ruh and Yu Peng, and rarely exhibited works by three women artists, Hong Mei-Ling, Hung Yi-Chen, and Cheng Chung-Chuan, which have systematically expanded the diversity of the TFAM collection, extending different research context.

The TFAM 40th-Anniversary Special Project Looks Forward into the Future and Revitalizes Memories about the TFAM History

The 40th-anniversary key visual is designed by Bito, and is inspired by organic cell division to underline the major progress of the evolving TFAM. Meanwhile, the museum also collaborates with Simbalion to present a limited edition of the TFAM 40th Anniversary Crayon Gift Box, which transforms the number “40” into a set of uniquely shaped crayons in an iconic palette of six “TFAM colors,” integrating the various views of the museum and the fun of graffiti into daily life. Furthermore, the TFAM collaborates with WU garden again to present the TFAM Keyring, which uses light, clear acrylic, and re-creates the museum’s initials – “TFAM” through the distinctive tube feature of the museum’s architectural design to extend the perspective and generating a three-dimensional visual tension using two-dimensional design, adding an eye-catching feature to quotidian life.

Since 1983, the TFAM has witnessed the development of Taiwanese art. In 2008, the museum launched an ongoing project to digitize the museum’s archives, and planned the “TFAM Archives” in 2018 to successively gather key historical materials. On the TFAM Day of the museum’s 40th anniversary, the “Exhibition Archive 1983-1994” centering on the TFAM’s first decade is open for public use. Moreover, Active Archives II: TFAM Exhibition Archive 1983-1994 is presented at the Library and Archive Center. On view in the archival exhibition are representative exhibition posters, selected exhibition invitations to application exhibitions and the series of avant-garde and experimental exhibitions, as well as the museum archives collated throughout the construction process of the archives. The audience can view long-stored printed materials, digitized photographic images, videos, journal clips, and other archives, which collectively demonstrate the trajectories of TFAM’s research about its position during the first decade, as well as the ambition and vision to revitalize the museum history for the future.

Ushering in the year of 2024, the TFAM continues the exhibition project of the previous year during the first season, attempting to view the world through a new vision at the beginning of the new year. Small World: Taipei Biennial 2023 on view in the first-floor, second-floor and basement galleries employs individual life experiences and aesthetic perception to transform the TFAM into a space of listening, gathering, and improvised creative work, guiding the audience to see the big picture through small things. The Taipei Art Awards 2023 on view in the third-floor galleries has announced the winner of the Grand Prize on November 3, and showcases nine works that unveil the creative endeavors of emerging Taiwanese artists, who voice their ideas about the world through dissimilar media.

Three Flagship Exhibitions Explore Global Geographical Awareness through Vocabularies of Contemporary Art

Modern Life: Taiwanese Architecture 1949-1983 is a research-based curatorial project by Wu Kwang-Tyng, Wang Chun-Hsiung, and Wang Tseng-Yung. The exhibition focuses on exploring issue events and factors of living culture that had an impact on the developmental context of Taiwanese architecture after the Nationalist government relocated to Taiwan. Diverse and modern architectural features become a window to study the cultural changes in post-war Taiwan. Following the timelines of six subtopics, the exhibition shows how Taiwan gradually stepped out of the shadow of political ideologies and moved towards the modern time of free living.

William Kentridge marks the debut of the artist’s first large-scale solo exhibition in Taiwan, and fully demonstrates his creative career spanning four decades. Collaborated between the TFAM and the Royal Academy of Arts, the exhibition reproduces the latter’s homonymous exhibition presented in 2022. A highly anticipated contemporary artist today, Kentridge is known for blending various multimedia art forms, including sketch drawing, video, sculpture, audiovisual installation, drama, literature, and performance, to bring about a stylized, idiosyncratic language, through which he states his insightful and dialectic thoughts on race, society, politics and other real-world issues concerning South Africa.

The Taiwan Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia 2024 will be officially open at Palazzo delle Prigioni on April 20, 2024. Adopting the theme of “Everyday War,” artist Yuan Goang-Ming and curator Abby Chen focus on the core ideas explored throughout Yuan’s career, and use video art and image language that Yuan is known for, combined with installations, to construct a quasi-domestic “everyday” site. Through metaphors discussing the unstable geopolitics of the island chain on the Pacific rim, the exhibition urges us to open our eyes to real life as well as the troubles and threats lurking in our “dwelling.”

Three TFAM Research-based Curatorial Projects Unfold a Multidimensional Space of Dialogue

The TFAM has consistently focused on research-based endeavors in exhibiting rarely shown works in the collection. At the end of 2024, two thematic exhibitions are planned and curated by the museum staff. Enclave: The Birth of an Autobiography appropriates “immanence” in relation to the human geographical idea of “enclave” to portray women artists’ psychological state, and refract their surging inner emotions and rich characteristics. The exhibition extends the common literary style of autobiographic narrative to feature women artists’ multifaceted life experiences, through which the different stages of their creative careers and focuses are unveiled. Meanwhile, the TFAM also looks into the museum collection to curate Gouache．Taiwan (tentative) that investigates the unique role of the art form in the modern development of Taiwanese art, and features related artists and their works to construct a developmental genealogy of Taiwanese gouache painting. The exhibition inquires into how gouache painters learn from and ruminate over native sources and external stimulations to formulate new interpretations.

To respond to the imagination beyond physical space in the contemporary society of technology, the TFAM launches a new network project to engage our global audience and expand the possibility of their participation. For the first project of the TFAM Net.Open, the TFAM collaborates with Nadim Samman, the curator of the KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin, and commissions Jon Rafman (Canada), Simon Denny (New Zealand), and Cheng Hsien-Yu (Taiwan) to create brand-new works. Meanwhile, an offline public program revolving around the idea of “co-working” will be launched to deepen audience and community engagement and co-creation to generate more dialogues and possibilities.

Six Solo Exhibitions of Taiwanese Artists Display Ample, Intergenerational Momentum of Artistic Creation

Hsu Yu-Jen: A Retrospective (tentative) is the artist’s first large-scale retrospective in his five-decade-long career, which systematically teases out his sketches, drawings, early experimental works, and so on, to show the artist’s creative trajectory and spiritual context. Mentored by Li Chun-Shan, Hsu traveled between the U.S. and Taiwan three times. He works with both ink and oil painting, and used to create stone sculptures as well. However, throughout his career, the exploration of the essence and innovative expression of Eastern ink painting has always been his steadfast and consistent endeavor. The exhibition showcases Hsu’s various series stemming from dissimilar ideas. Having immersed himself in Western cultural impacts several times, Hsu has still insisted on his quest of ink art from a contemporary viewpoint, creating his signature “thin-brush and fragmented lines” that has evolved into a highly individualistic style.

In addition, new-generation artists have been keeping up with the times by responding to contemporary issues with their acute observation and respective context of art. Ni Hsiang’s solo exhibition – Everyone Is Here to See You draws inspiration from his personal experience of being a home care provider, and discusses topics of senility, the physical and mental demand of accompanying patients, as well as the helplessness when facing death through a humorous approach. Chen I-Shu’s solo exhibition – Fake Landscape features a painting series reflecting on issues of the current Russo-Ukrainian War, which prompts the spectator to contemplate on questions about national border/territory and boundary/position. Also drawing inspiration from the situation in Ukraine, Shyu Ruey-Shiann’s solo exhibition – Between II uses the event “Tsina Viyny” (Price of War) as an entry point, and employs readymade and audio recordings to engage the audience in thinking about “how to preserve the positive meanings of life.” Tsai Pou-Ching’s Solo Exhibition – Specimens from the Empire investigates specimens from the period of Japanese rule that have been given different values and implications due to historical and environmental changes, offering an alternative way to view the specimens and past events. Featuring the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Taipei Art Awards, Lin Yen-Chun’s Solo Exhibition is scheduled at the end of the year. The exhibition revolves around the artist’s memories of searching for, studying, and listening to the coexistence between all living beings and the environment in sleep, and utilizes sound, sculpture, and dream to construct a transitional zone between this world and the world beyond.

2024/01/16 | Press Release｜Music Program in Taipei Biennial 2023 showcases intercultural exchange│Press

2024/01/09 | Visitor Information｜The museum is closed on Feb. 9,10 and 12 for the Chinese New Year holiday

2024/01/04 | Visitor Information｜2024 Art Library visit notes

	2023 Taipei Art Awards 2023/11/18 - 2024/03/24 Galleries 1A,1B,2A,2B,D,E,F(1F,2F,BF) The title “Small World” suggests both a promise and a threat: a promise of greater control over one’s own life, and a threat of isolation from a larger community following a global pandemic. Our world can become smaller as we grow closer to one another, but also as we grow apart. This “Small World” takes place within such a suspended state of being unable to join together nor completely separate. Through a series of presentations that comprise sound, music, moving images, photography, video, paintings, sculptures and installations, “Small World” presents audiences with the dilemma faced by us and our societies. Curated by curator Freya Chou, writer and editor Brian Kuan Wood, and curator Reem Shadid, this year’s iteration will bring together over 50 international and local artists and musicians, transforming the museum into a space of listening, gathering, improvising, and exploring alternative ways to perceive and apply what we learned from the recent pandemic. Nineteen new works and commissions will be featured at the Biennial, alongside installations, performances, and musical and cinematic experiences that question promises of the simple and sensual amidst increasing tension and complexity.
	2023 Taipei Art Awards 2023/11/04 - 2024/02/18 Galleries 3A, 3B (3F) The 2023 Taipei Art Awards will feature brilliant and vibrant works by the 9 artists that made it into the final judging round: Wu Chia-Yun’s work expands from film to installation and conceptual art; Wu Wei-Ting’s work originates from the exploration of the perceptual potential of everyday objects, pondering the connection between the spatial presentation and everyday life; Lee Li-Chung studies pigeon racing culture to construct a path for internal dialogue on issues such as belonging, destiny, and post-globalization; Chuang Pei-Xin explores the imagination and variation of digital matter and the body, providing viewers with a sentimental perspective under rational operations; Chen Zi-Yin uses videos, installations, images, algorithms, space, and other diverse mediums to explore how the line between senses and science affect human perception of reality; Chen Zhao-Hua uses his personal experiences as the trajectory of his work, examining the cycle of struggles for survival through mechanical structures; Peng Si-Qi introduces everyday intimate objects through composite media and installations to connect personal emotions and the ebb and flow of time; Peng Wei expands the application of sketching concepts to painting, three-dimensional works, videos, and interactive installations to explore the transformation, transmission, and reception of creative formats; Lai Jiun-Ting uses artificial organs to liberate human beings’ electromagnetic consciousness, allowing viewers to witness how superhumans are created in the exhibition.
	Add Some In, Take Some Out—Playing Games with the Body 2023/10/14 - 2024/02/25  Children's Art Education Center Add Some In, Take Some Out—Playing Games with the Body starts with our most familiar tool – the body, and unfolds game experiences and ideas of playing games through “sculpture” as the central theme, guiding the audience to navigate and savor this instinctual and historically rich form of art. “Body” is a quintessential topic in sculpture. It is not only a favorable subject and source of inspiration for artists, but also a topic that many artists spend their entire lives to study and explore. Add Some In, Take Some Out focuses on the “body” as a focal point in sculpture, and participatorily engages the audience in exploring diverse and multifaceted aspects of the “body” in sculpture, from portraying those close to us, investigating the connection between physical forms and space, to even viewing ourselves as the origin of developing sculpture.

Walking the Crack ＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿ NT｜700 Walking creates paths, which may be shortcuts or perhaps detours. A path may start from tracking others or following in their footsteps. Sometimes people march in line. Sometimes they pace back and forth. Sometimes they walk a perilous road. These many different walking paths form lines, some running parallel to each other, others intersecting, all of them ultimately interweaving into a surface and forming a network. This is also how the exhibition connects art with daily life, artists with viewers, artworks with spaces. The viewing and reading of the exhibition are drawn together into a cycle, which implies the cycle of birth and perishing that encompasses the universe and all things.

Taipei Fine Arts Museum Modern Art. 210 ＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿ NT｜450 Topic: Art Museums and Advanced Technology Exhibition Focus: A One and A Two: Edward Yang Retrospective Feature: Feature Photos from the Independence Post, 1985-1994