This is not a Taiwan Pavilion: Collateral Event of the 55th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia
1 June–24 November 2013
Preview: 29–31 May 2013
Palazzo delle Prigioni
Castello 4209, San Marco
Venezia, Italy
The Taipei Fine Arts Museum of Taiwan announces Esther Lu as curator and Chia-Wei Hsu, Bernd Behr, and Kateřina Šedá as featured artists who presented the collateral event titled This is not a Taiwan Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia.
States curator Esther Lu, “This project resonates with the context of the historical circumstances and current conditions of Taiwan’s participation in the International Art Exhibition in Venice. Parallel artistic and curatorial narratives will explore and engage with questions of subjectification to conceive of the Pavilion not only as an exhibition space, but also as a concept evolving on a temporal axis in order to illuminate the formation of cultural subjectivity.” The exhibition concept thus outgrows the boundaries of representation for a de facto or imagined pavilion. Departing from investigations and deconstructions of narrative, historiography, and identity, the curatorial remit foregrounds the agency of art alongside functions of imagination in a way that corresponds with the 2013 Venice Biennale theme of “The Encyclopedic Palace.”
Chia-Wei Hsu (b. 1983, Taiwan) lives and works in Taipei. Hsu graduated from the Graduate School of Plastic Art, National Taiwan University of Arts. His artistic practice investigates the subject of imagery and narrative through video installation to expose contemporary mechanisms of spectacle production while addressing memory, imagination, identity, and other cultural connections to filming sites. The juxtaposition of performance and event in the narratives of video and installation creates a wormhole, weaving together reality and imagination.
Bernd Behr (b. 1976, Taiwan/ Germany) is based in London. Born in Hamburg, Germany, and raised in Malaysia, Behr studied at Goldsmiths College, London. Working across video, photography, sculpture, and writing, his practice operates a speculative archaeology at the historical junctures of images, narratives and the built environment. Often engaging with specific architectural sites and their associative histories, his work inserts itself into these subjects through modes of research and fiction.
Kateřina Šedá (b. 1977, Czech Republic) lives and works in Brno, Czech Republic. Šedá’s work often engages a community to explore subjects of relationships, cultural identity, and daily politics in an urban setting. Through creating social games and social sculpture, she invites individuals from a local community to participate in a process to resolve real, shared issues. When this process becomes a switching point to overturn reality and inspire new perceptions, the participatory experience becomes a process of subjectification: a new reality is born from a game. Šedá’s practice sheds light on humanity and a better common tomorrow.
Commissioned curator Esther Lu (b. 1977) is a Taiwanese freelance curator based in Taipei. Lu studied literature and art history, and completed an MA at Goldsmiths College and curatorial studies in CuratorLab, Konstfack University. She is interested in exploring practices to mobilize connections and conversations inside and outside of institutions. Her conceptual experiments often address the agency of art and initiate alternative artistic productions in between social scenes in reality and platforms of art in order to investigate the critical role of art today.
The Taipei Fine Arts Museum has organized the exhibition for Taiwan at the International Art Exhibition in Venice since 1995. TFAM is dedicated to the development of modern and contemporary art in Taiwan, as well as the promotion of international art exchanges. For the 2013 edition, the TFAM inaugurated a local open call competition, and Esther Lu’s project was selected for its intent to capture the tension between imagination and criticality in contemporary art. The jury panel included Taiwanese curators Lin Ping, Jason Chia-Chi Wang, Manray Hsu, and Fang-Wei Chang, as well as Zdenka Badovinac, director of Moderna Galerija/ Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Press Enquiries
Yang Shun-Wen, yangsw@tfam.gov.tw
Taipei Fine Arts Museum
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