The 7th Taishin Arts Awards was awarded to the best visual and performing arts in Taiwan for the year 2008. The award ceremony took place on May 2, 2009 at the Taishin Tower.
The international jury included: Tai-Song CHEN Art Critic (Taiwan); Du HUANG Senior curator, Beijing Today Art Museum (China); Christiane PAUL Adjunct curator, New Media Arts of Whitney Museum of American Art (USA); Yu-Pin LIN Associate Professor of Drama Department of Taipei National University of the Arts (Taiwan); Liuyi LI Director/Playwright, Beijing People\'s Art Theatre (China); Joseph SEELIG Director, London International Mime Festival (UK); Hiroko NISHIMURA Producer, Tiny Alice Theatre / The Asia Little Theatre Exchange Network (Japan); and Anita MATHIEU Director, Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales, Seine-Saint-Denis (France).
The prestigious annual prize recognizes the best of Taiwanese visual art and performing arts. Besides the Performing Arts Award and the Visual Arts Award, each worth NT $1 million, there is the Jury\'s Special Award for NT $300,000.
The winner for the Visual Arts Award is Jun-Jieh WANG (王俊傑) for his installation David Project III: David\'s Paradise \"whose sophisticated visual language does not just pursue an aesthetic of technology, but rather emphasizes the service of technological methods to the needs of the concepts of art.\"
The winner for the Performing Arts Award is Capital Ballet Taipei\'s Surround, (台北首督芭蕾舞團 ) \"a powerful, contemporary, high quality dance production. It explores the reality of life in today\'s world, the place of the individual in society, his isolation, self-doubt and need to communicate.\"
The Jury\'s Special Award went to Tien-Chang WU\'s Shock˙Shot (吳天章) where \"perfection and imperfection, as well as, classical and kitsch, reflect on each other in interesting ways. His affecting work reintroduces an element of humor that seems to have vanished in today\'s Taiwan.\"
The Taishin Arts Award exhibition opened April 25, 2009 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei and features the work of all the 14 finalists who were shortlisted by a local jury. A published catalogue is available.
The Taishin Art Foundation nurtures the arts and works within both the local and art communities to build greater understanding for the arts.
