The Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) is delighted to present Art Histories of a Forever War: Modernism between Space and Home.
In the face of renewed geopolitical interests in Taiwan, technological warfare and planetary crises that demand new shared global visions, the exhibition is a provocative art historical charting of Cold War legacies into the contemporary. Based on a research project by guest curators Kathleen Ditzig and Hsu Fang-Tze, it constellates the development of modern art in Taiwan as part of a global history and presses the urgent question: In an increasingly divided world, can art write over the lacunas of history and geopolitics?
The exhibition also presents works by Cho Chung-Yung, Ma Shou-Hua, Ran In-Ting, and Wang Da-Hong; historical material loaned from archives, libraries and museums from Taiwan and around the world; and contemporary artworks by Erika Tan (Singapore/United Kingdom), Sung Tieu (Vietnam/Germany), Maria Taniguchi (Philippines), Chen Yin-Ju (Taiwan), Prajakta Potnis (India), Aya Rodriguez-Izumi (Okinawa/US), Doris Wong Wai Yin (Hong Kong), Yee I-Lann (Borneo), Writing FACTory (Taiwan) in collaboration with Joy Ho (Singapore) and Joanne Ho (Singapore).
Addressing the complexity of a global history, the exhibition is organized into three themes: “Cosmotechnics after the Space Race,” “Global Domestic,” and “Aesthetic Networks of the Free World.” Focusing on how the moon landing of 1969 inspired modern artists, “Cosmotechnics after the Space Race” brings together works that not only celebrated the moon landing but also registered a philosophical and perspectival shift in Chinese modern art. Presented in dialogue and thus pointing to an enduring cosmic imagination, Chen Yin-Ju’s installation Extrastellar Evaluations (2016) posits a speculative historiography of the 1960s.