SUNSHOWER in Taipei—Oceans We Live By
Exhibition Dates: June 17 to July 26, 2019
The large-scale exhibition SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now on display now at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (KMFA) features Southeast Asian contemporary art and discusses the political, historical and social development of the Southeast Asian countries. In connection with the exhibition, the Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture collaborates with the KMFA to present Oceans We Live By, which juxtaposes the works of Martha Atienza and Yee I-Lann, who have both participated the Tokyo version of the SUNSHOWER exhibition. Through the dialogue and multidimensional cultural horizon interwoven by the artists’ works, the exhibition reflects the indeterminate borders of life in modern world as well as the tension of survival resulting from humanity’s conflict, connection and coexistence with nature.
Yee’s Sulu Stories on view in the exhibition engages in the topics of personal memory, boundary and the construction of mythology. The artist starts with the uncertain national border and identity of the Sulu Sea between Malaysia and the Philippines, and revisits the oceanic history through archival images and a semi-fictional approach. Martha Atienza, who also possesses different identities, exhibits Our Islands 11°17‘19.6’‘N 123°43’12.5”E. The artist collaborates with local scuba divers on Bantayan Island in Cebu, the Philippines, to recreate the traditional religious ceremony performed in Ati-Atihan Festival. While the work combines human struggles for livelihood in contemporary society with the marinescape, it also cautions all to pay more attention to the contemporary issue of ecological and environmental changes.
