The Chen Uen exhibition at the National Palace Museum would prove a comprehensive overview of the comic artist’s work, although with a stated focus on the artist’s “art, life, and philosophy,” the exhibition has a definitive slant towards hagiography...
It's funny. I thought I had nothing to write about. But then I went to the Digital Art Center (DAC) for Cheng HsienYu’s “solo exhibition” Closed and Renovation. Now I really have nothing to write about, and that’s actually something...
In past years in Taipei, many coffee shops and cafes have sprouted up run by young people, sometimes moving into formerly unused spaces in order to open them. What are the challenges of running such a cafe? We might take an inside look...
Leona Chen's Book of Cord marks the emergence of a powerful new Taiwanese-American voice among contemporary Asian-American poets, as a small, slim book of experimental poetry...
As part of New Bloom's current collaboration with the Taipei Arts Festival's 'Think Bar,' we will be keeping an ongoing, regularly updated journal of what goes on during the festival...
Conservative social reactions to the Huashan murder case have continued, with further attempts to pin blame on the residents of the 120 Grassroots Self-Autonomous Zone artistic community by the media and society. As with before, much outrage has been centered on PTT, which has hardly proven to be a progressive social force in this case, and instead an enforcer of a highly conservative social morality. On the other hand, we might note that members of Taiwan’s artistic community have in many cases proven little better, with greater emphasis on pointing fingers, and apportioning blame than rallying together in solidarity...
The gender politics and ethnic minority identity of pop diva A-mei, also known as Amit, Kulilay Amit, or Chang Hui-mei, prove worth examining. We might look at the series of developments which led her to embrace indigenous identity in music ...
The much-anticipated South African film of the year, The Wound, was officially released on the 27th of April, 2018, in the UK. The film was much anticipated because it is indeed one of the very few films that deal with aspects of homoeroticism and homosexuality in traditional African communities. But what to make of the film and reactions to it among white, liberal audiences?...
