The prestigious Taiwanese contemporary arts award, Taishin Arts Award, honors innovative imagination in arts and aims to create a platform for dialogues between different disciplines. On May 13, 2017, guests from the culture and art circles as well as the corporate sector attended the award ceremony, during which the award winners were announced. This year, the winners are:
Taishin Visual Arts Award:
THE BLACK WAVES─Ghost Mountain Ghost Shovel Art Collective, Huang Ya-li, Xie Zhongqi, LipingLiping, Liu Fang-yi, Lee Shih-yang (NTD 1 million monetary award).
Taishin Performing Arts Award:
Kids─Liu Kuan Hsiang (NTD 1 million monetary award).
Taishin Annual Grand Prize:
Huai Mo Village─Chia-Wei Hsu (NTD 1.5 million monetary award).
After three years of selecting winners in an unclassified manner, re-considering the differences inherent to different types of arts, the Award has re-adopted the classification of “visual arts” and “performing arts.” The Award, however, retains the “Annual Grand Prize” to honor the indiscriminating spirit of art, to reflect the interdisciplinary trend in contemporary art, and to stimulate more and greater possibilities in artistic creation.
The first award announced in the ceremony was the Visual Arts Award, which went to THE BLACK WAVES for its outstanding artistry as well as manifestation of innovative thinking, fresh vision and new direction of expression. The work, co-created by Ghost Mountain Ghost Shovel Art Collective, Huang Ya-li, and four artists, started with an avant-garde visual concept and was performed at the Tsai Jui-yueh Dance Research Institute. The jury committee thus commented, “THE BLACK WAVES is a moving live art project that allows us to contemplate a forgotten history of Taiwan, when the European avant-garde arrived through the lens of Japan. The dynamic retrieval in this art work is particularly outstanding for its strategies of reenactment and invention. The powerful spontaneous eruption of poetry, gymnastics, image and sound art reveals a complex moment of the literary landscape of Taiwan, the Le Moulin Poetry Society. “
The Performing Arts Award, with an emphasis on overall production, masterful artistic performance and creativity, went to choreographer and dancer Liu Kuan Hsiang, who produced Kids at Cloud Gate Theater. The work has won the favor of the jury committee that gave the following praises about the work: “Kids presents the exuberance of life in the valley of death. This work draws on and goes beyond the choreographer’s personal experience facing death to meditate on the ever-present issue of mortality that haunts humanity. The audio recording of a dialogue between him and his late mother is transformed into a wondrous soundscape, intensifying the explosive, layered and impressive performance by three excellent dancers.”
The Annual Grand Prize upholds the ideal of breaking through existing frames and honors the spirit of interdisciplinary exchange and exploration. This year, among the nineteen finalists, the jury committee gave the prize to Chia-Wei Hsu’s Huai Mo Village, and unanimously agreed that “Huai Mo Village is awarded the grand prize for its artistry, its strong humanitarian concern and cross-cultural features, juxtaposing this place and the other place, reality and virtuality. Chia Wei Hsu creates an engaging, complex universe that opens up understanding and imagination of geopolitical events, with their continuing ramifications on human beings through time. Huai Mo Village discusses a secret history and forgotten people resulting from the political struggles of the Cold War, at the border of Thailand and Myanmar. “
The Award’s final selection jury committee this year was formed by four Taiwanese jurors, including Wu Mali, Zhang Xiao-Xiong, Hung Hung, and Chen Kuang-Yi, and three international jurors, including the Director of the OK Offenes Kulturhaus Oberösterreich, Linz, Austria, Martin Sturm, the Festival Director of the Singapore International Festival of Arts, Ong Keng Sen, and the Artistic Director of Performance Space, Sydney, Australia, Jeff Khan.
