2018 Next Art Tainan: The Metamorphosis

Date: 2018/3/15 – 2018/4/15

The exhibition adopts the title of Franz Kafka’s 1915 novella, The Metamorphosis. It explores the concepts of hybridity, particularly the combination of humans and beasts. It also examines the amalgamation of humans and machines, resulting in the creation of cyborgs, as well as the transition between reality and virtuality in cyberspace. The exhibition also responds to Shan Hai Ching, which is a classic Chinese text depicting a variety of imaginary and mythicized creatures and landscapes. We live in an era which cannot be understood through any single theory. Important issues of human history (such as subjects and sexuality) are composed of multiple and intersectional cultural components, which form networks that interact within themselves. These intersectional networks are a form of metamorphosis. Consequently, this exhibition explores both the physical hybridity of objects and creatures, and the complexity of society and individual ideologies. This cultural transformation is a metamorphosed ‘monster’, which is the constant intersection of people’s ideas about subjectivity (such as their personality, nationality, gender and the economy), and represents the shifting and conflicting nature of our everyday lives.

The exhibition has invited ten eminent artists seven from Taiwan, and three international artists from Thailand, the UK and the USA, to exhibit their work at ten different art spaces across the city of Tainan, alongside an additional ten emerging young artists. The exhibited work covers a wide range of media, including painting, multi-media, ceramics, installation, sculptures and new media art, among others. They form visible (physical) and non-visible (cultural) Metamorphoses.

Participants

Curator: Ming Turner

Artists: Ming-Te Lu, Mao-Lin Yang, Pey-Chwen Lin, Yu-Chuan Tseng, Zan-Lun Huang, Tzu-Ning Wu, Chien-Hua Huang, Krisaya Luenganantakul, Ashok Mistry, Saya Woolfalk

Venues: MUMU Gallery, AsirArt Museum, Aglow Space, 182 Art Space, Licence Art Gallery, Absolute Space, InArt, Mizuiro Workshop, Soka Art Center, BBArt

Chief Organiser: Tainan City Government

Organizer: Tainan City Government Cultural Bureau

Co-organizer: Foundation of Tainan Culture

Sponsors: Tayih Landis Tainan, the place Tainan, YiIisu