Director's Foreword

The Biennale Arte stands as a pivotal platform that facilitates critical dialogue between Taiwan and the global community. Since 1995, our museum has curated our exhibition event to showcase the diversity of Taiwanese art and to address contemporary societal issues. In 2015, we adopted a solo artist exhibition model for the first time, focusing on the comprehensive body of work from an established artist. Each of these artists has addressed contemporary, environmental, and global issues through their evolving artistic practices, reflecting on their experiences and observations from Taiwan. This method has attracted attention both within Taiwan and internationally. Following this methodology, a committee of seven nominators conducted an extensive deliberation and unanimously chose Yuan Goang-Ming as the representative artist for the Taipei Fine Arts Museum of Taiwan Collateral Event at the Biennale Arte 2024.

A vanguard in Taiwanese visual art, Yuan Goang-Ming is renowned for his evocative, poetic narrative approach. His initial foray into conceptual video installations often stemmed from personal experiences. Since 2001, Yuan's artistic scope has expanded to include depictions of urban existence and the state of globalization, as exemplified by his City Disqualified series, where a collage of fragmented images captures deserted scenes of Ximending. His Disappearing Landscapes from 2007 introduced a new form of dynamic imagery that amalgamated video art and cinema, presenting a nuanced, semi-autobiographical exploration of a latent disquiet that permeates everyday life. In his 2014 work, Dwelling, the artist interrogates ways in which dwelling can become poetic under the conditions of contemporary society.

This year's Taipei Fine Arts Museum of Taiwan Collateral Event at the Biennale Arte extends Yuan Goang-Ming's video poetics, rich in allegory and critique, and further delves into the theme of Everyday War. This motif, recurrent in Yuan's notable recent works and in a new piece commissioned for this exhibition, explores the pervasive sense of impending disaster during periods of social transition, and the manifestations of fear as nightmares in personal experiences. In response to the regional and contemporary specificities of this exhibition, we have enlisted curator Abby Chen, a distinguished veteran figure in the realm of Asian contemporary art. Chen's curatorship aims to stimulate trans-national dialogue and collaboration, to introduce a compelling influx of Taiwanese perspectives to the Biennale Arte.

We extend our profound appreciation to artist Yuan Goang-Ming and curator Abby Chen for taking up the gauntlet amidst high expectations from the art community. In the Palazzo Priccioni, a space that once served as a prison, they have reimagined and infused the exhibited works with newfound significance. We eagerly anticipate the reflective impact of Yuan Goang-Ming's meditations on personal existence and the human condition, with hope they will provoke thoughtful introspection at this Biennale Arte. Our heartfelt thanks, too, to the dedicated team involved in the exhibition, and to the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Taipei City Government for their collaborative resources in realizing this year's Taipei Fine Arts Museum of Taiwan Collateral Event.

Jun-Jieh Wang
Director of Taipei Fine Arts Museum of Taiwan

Director's Foreword
Jun-Jieh Wang

Curatorial Essay
Everyday War / Abby Chen

Plates
Everyday Maneuver
The 561st Hour of Occupation
What Lies Beyond Us?
Dwelling
Everyday War
Prophecy
Flat World

Artist Essay
Tomorrowland / Yuan Goang-Ming

Public Forum
Artist: Yuan Goang-Ming
Curator: Abby Chen

Index of Works
Acknowledgements