Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Comments on the Finalist

This curatorial exhibition is the model of exchange independently created outside of official institutions through active alliance by a group formed by artists (Open-Contemporary Art Center). This is also a transnational connection formed by artists as they try to establish own organization within the globalized cultural industry. The artists have obtained respectable achievements in their organization ability of exhibitions, as well as their identification of creative concepts. On one hand, the exhibition displays the rich creative energy and wide variety of works of artists in Taiwan and Thailand, unlimited to any specific art form, such as video installation, document, photography, sculpture, and documentary films; on the other hand, the exhibition reveals the cultural, economic, and historic connections of Taiwan and southeast Asia (Thailand) veiled by capitalist system. This is a life community that transcends ethnical identities incepted by the artists. (Written by CHEN Tai-Song)

Artwork Introduction

ThaiTai - A Measure of Understanding explores the expansion of “placeness” as a spatial concept to further consider a potential placeness that is migratory and movable between Taiwan and Thailand. An examination of the models of biennials and video works in recent years in the contemporary art world reveals a unique sense of traveling and a fluid quality that have permeated the creative context of recent contemporary art. The reason does not merely lie in the adjustment of supply and demand in the global economic scene and the effect produced by form and material. Instead, the phenomenon stems from the “documentality” embedded in the works of artists: how culture, history and art forms are interwoven to give rise to new narrative structures, and how these texts are utilized to reflect on the self and the proactive actions taken presently. In this exhibition, the artists develop multifaceted content based on the culture and geography of Taiwan and Thailand. Whereas Taiwanese artists engage in Taiwan’s colonial history, familial memory, social status, or art and politics, Thai artists tend to concentrate on mythology, legend, and gender. Whether the works are realized in physical or conceptual space, the artists have connected or reshaped different texts to reversely create the new place belonging to the present.

The “Taiwan-Thailand Exchange Program” deepens the dimension and meaning of exchange between Thai and Taiwanese contemporary artists, presents the possibility of building different communication channels, and facilitates extensive dialogue in the form of residency and artistic creation between artists from both places. The three-year program includes two stages of Taiwan-Thailand exchange programs, and offers new working methods in terms of artistic and cultural exchange in the globalized capital context. Relying on the creativity and agency of artists, the “Taiwan-Thailand Exchange Program” marks out the reference points of a new practice system, while offering an imaginable and extendable blueprint for collaboration in the Southeast Asian region.

About the Artist 

Founded in 2001, the Open Contemporary Art Center (OCAC) is an art group co-organized by a group of artists. After moving three times (including a residency in Bangkok, Thailand), OCAC is now located in Shilin, Taipei, and comprises fifteen members. Apart from developing their own works, the members are also active in the Taiwanese contemporary art scene as OCAC through exhibition planning, lectures, talks, publication, as well as inter-regional collaboration and exchange. Through reflecting on the connection between artistic creation and contemporary society, OCAC aims to propose original viewpoints that are worthy of discussion. Their point of attention is the feedback and reproduction of Taiwan (and its art) in the globalized context of art, through the process of which they are able to investigate what “contemporary” means to them. By expanding the work space, OCAC discusses a proposal of contemporary survival that resists a world where capital takes command. They actively engage in diverse cultural practices, facilitate scenes of idea exchange, while exploring art actions in the real world and how such actions propel people. Since 2010, they have co-developed a Taiwan-Thailand exchange program with Thai artists. Using their friendship as a connecting bridge, they have unveiled a new dimension of contemporary art exchange between Taiwan and Southeast Asian countries.