Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Three Winners of the 23rd Taishin Arts Award Announced

CHANG Li-Ren Brings Home the Grand Prize with

Battle City: Finale Concluding a 14-Year-Long Creative Journey

NI Xiang Takes Home the Visual Arts Award with His Hoarding Aesthetics Embodied by Everyone came to see you, and flowers bloom on the dead end x HSU Peng Win the Performing Arts Award with Great-Grand Rat-Po-Tai (So Old) Is Sleeping Next To A Landscape Painting, Diligently & Stingily Snoring—But There Is No Landscape Painting! 

On May 24th, the Taishin Arts Award, a benchmark of excellence in Taiwan’s contemporary art that honors outstanding artistry, humanistic values, and the zeitgeist, announced the winners of its 23rd edition, selected from 15 shortlisted projects.

Visual Arts Award (NT$ 1 million prize money)

Everyone came to see you—Ni Xiang Solo Exhibition by NI Xiang

Performing Arts Award (NT$ 1 million prize money)

Great-Grand Rat-Po-Tai (So Old) Is Sleeping Next To A Landscape Painting, Diligently & Stingily Snoring——But There Is No Landscape Painting! (White Carrot, Rat Teeth, Her Child, (And Her Child’s Child.)) by flowers bloom on the dead end x HSU Peng

Grand Prize (NT$ 1.5 million prize money)

Battle City: Finale—2023 Dreamin’ MoNTUE by CHANG Li-Ren

The 23rd Taishin Arts Award – A group photo of the laureates of the three Awards. From the left Feng Zhi-Ming (Representative of NI Xiang), CHANG Li-Ren, HSU Peng and CHANG Mien-mien (flowers bloom on the dead end) 

All three awarded projects draw from personal life histories and experiences to highlight broader societal issues, including long-term care and illness care, women’s situations in a patriarchal society, and personal defiance against authoritarianism, media violence, and existential challenges. By employing various media that blend reality with virtuality, these projects prompt viewers to engage in profound reflection.

The final selection committee for this year was chaired by the esteemed U.S.-based art critic KAO Chien-Hui and comprised notable members, including art critic CHANG Yun-Ting, theatre critic CHOU, Katherine Hui-Ling and HSU, Walter Jen-Hao, French choreographer Mathilde Monnier, Korean artist Park Chan-kyong, and Singaporean curator TANG Fu Kuen. After three days of comprehensive discussions, the committee selected three award winners, which collectively amounted to a total of NT$3.5 million in prize money.

The Visual Arts Award is awarded to Everyone came to see you—Ni Xiang Solo Exhibition. NI Xiang begins with personal experiences and uses large-scale installations and video works that may appear chaotic and whimsical at first glance to confront reality and address critical social issues, such as elder care, the experience of being a patient companion, and the distinction between life and death, immersing viewers in an idiosyncratic artistic appeal through his “hoarding aesthetics.”

Jury’s Comments for the 23rd Visual Arts Award Winner:

NI Xiang has developed a singular aesthetics of disorder by recomposing found and hoarded objects from his family home. In giving the discarded items a second life, he also reveals a caregiver’s predicament in an aging society. He transforms his life situation of entrapment into a large-scale installation that summons the embodied perception and memory of the ordinary folks, and their confrontation of mortality. The project employs black humor to make a satirical and self-deprecating criticism of lived reality, society, and its institutions. The collage and assemblage of excessive objects as both material and symbol, which speak of the erosion of dreams and the state of powerlessness, are profoundly moving.

The 23rd Taishin Arts Award – Board director LIN Mun-Lee (right) presents the Visual Arts Award to Representative group of NI Xiang (From the left) Yu Ching-Jung, Tung Chai-Yun and Feng Zhi-Ming

The 23rd Taishin Arts Award – the Visual Arts Award Everyone came to see you—Ni Xiang Solo Exhibition by NI Xiang, Free Time (screenshot), Image courtesy of the artist and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum

The Performing Arts Award was presented to Great-Grand Rat-Po-Tai (So Old) Is Sleeping Next To A Landscape Painting, Diligently & Stingily Snoring——But There Is No Landscape Painting! Created by director-playwright HSU Peng, the production, which features flowers that bloom on the dead end, was staged in the century-old ancestral home of the Hsu family located in Guoling, Zhongli. It intricately weaves a magical realist narrative revolving around the lives of the women in the family. Hsu transforms mundane domestic trivialities and snippets into a richly layered theatrical text through “sui sui nian” (碎碎唸), a recitation style based on murmuring, along with a meandering performative style, skillfully merging the surrounding environment with the narrative. Utilizing witty, sharp, and surreal imagination, the piece emerges as a critique of patriarchal norms articulated from a distinct perspective informed by female poetics.

Jury’s Comments for the 23rd Performing Arts Award Winner:

This exuberantly fabular creation by HSU Peng and her young wacky collaborators, “flowers bloom on the dead end,” literally takes over her sprawling ancestral courtyard house in remote Guoling of Zhongli District, and breaths new and radical life into the domestic household - once constricted by the patriarchy of Hakka culture - by re-imagining the lived experiences of its women inhabitants, emancipating their sedimented voices and emotional world. By inventing a hyperbolic acting technique (filled with trivia, mundane, non-stop, and desultory dialogue and musical punctuations) and a 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴 of the derelict architecture, the work produces a madcap process of both alienation and engagement for the characters and audience, at once funny yet robustly vernacular. Life and death in a Hakka family undergoes subversive episodes of a queer romance staged in the ancestral hall, a transversal romp of culinary-human-animal enactments, and a portrait of intergenerational bonds that transcend species!

The 23rd Taishin Arts Award– Board director WU Jing-Jyi (middle) presents the Performing Arts Award to HSU Peng (left) and CHANG Mienn-mien (flowers bloom on the dead end)

The 23rd Taishin Arts Award – the Performing Arts Award Great-Grand Rat-Po-Tai (So Old) Is Sleeping Next To A Landscape Painting, Diligently & Stingily Snoring——But There Is No Landscape Painting! by flowers bloom on the dead end x HSU Peng, Photo by WU Yu-Ying

The Grand Prize, which was announced last, was awarded to Battle City: Finale by CHANG Li-Ren. The project marks the end of a 14-year journey focused on battle narratives of resistance and defense. In 2024, the artist made a full debut at MoNTUE, showcasing all three episodes of the trilogy along with the figures, models, sets, and manuscripts from the production, quickly drawing the public’s attention. Using inexpensive materials and low-tech approaches, CHANG challenges the notion of how artists can persist, maintain autonomy, and uphold their ideals within the confines of societal norms and collective values.

Jury’s Comments for the 23rd Grand Prize Winner:

CHANG Li-Ren’s artistic practice treats art as a way of life, embodying “the autonomy of artistic creation”. Over fourteen years, his magnum opus integrates plastic arts, narrative, and moving image with sketching, puppetry, miniature model construction, and animation. Working with fragile materials, gibberish language, and driven by the ethos of independent production, he crafts “sites of memory” that explore both personal growth and collective destiny. CHANG appropriates narratives from popular culture to subvert Hollywood-style heroism. Through a parodic trilogy centered on “ordinary people,” he examines contemporary geopolitics on both microscopic and macroscopic scales. Using “battle” as a metaphor, his work conveys individual resistance against global hegemonies, media violence, and existential conundrums, offering an allegorical reflection on the complexities of our shared realities.

The 23rd Taishin Arts Award – Board director, May Wu presents the Grand Prize to GHANG Li-Ren

The 23rd Taishin Arts Award – the Grand Prize Battle City: Finale by CHANG Li-Ren, Photo by Sean Wang

Kao states that selecting a Grand Prize winner from the 15 exceptional projects was very challenging. She appreciates the jury for their gentle persistence and rational listening throughout the discussions, making it a rewarding experience of shared learning. The shortlisted projects provided both emotional impact and visual pleasure, showing us tremendous creative energy.

The award ceremony this year was coordinated and directed by theater director SU Yang-Cheng from How to Eat Faust. Esteemed theater and screen performers LIANG Hao-Lan and HUANG Di-Yang served as hosts for the event. Their month-long street interviews with more than 80 ordinary citizens throughout the city were presented as “Where Does the Audience Goes?” during the ceremony, which provided candid and humorous insights into the public’s views and imaginations of art, eliciting both laughter and reflection.

For comprehensive details on all shortlisted and winning projects, visit the dedicated webpage of the “23rd Taishin Arts Award” on the Taishin Foundation for Arts and Culture website.

The 23rd Taishin Arts Award – The laureates of the three Awards have a group photo with the board directors of the Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture, and the Taishin Arts Award jurors and nominators

The 23rd Taishin Arts Award webpage: https://www.taishinart.org.tw/en/art-award-year-news/2024

The full-length video of the award ceremony: https://www.youtube.com/live/jq-WvI4eZx8

Facebook fan page of the Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture: https://www.facebook.com/TAISHINART/