THE Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) is pleased to announce that Yuan Goang-ming has been selected as the sole artist representing Taiwan in Venice in 2024. Abby Chen, Head of Contemporary Art and Senior Associate Curator at the Museum of Asian Art, San Francisco, will curate the exhibition.
Born in 1965, Yuan received his master’s degree in media art from Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in 1997. He is now a professor in the Department of New Media Arts at National Taipei University of the Arts. His series of digital photographs City disqualified and the kinetic light installation “Human Disqualified” were featured in the group exhibition held for Taiwan’s side event at the 50th Venice Biennale. His other major solo and group exhibitions include before the memory (TKG+, Taipei, Taiwan; 2011), A strange tomorrow (TKG+, Taipei, Taiwan; 2014), Memories through the cycle (Art Tower Mito, Ibaraki, Japan; 2016), and tomorrowland (Hayward Gallery, London, UK; 2018).
While Yuan’s early conceptual video installations draw on his own experiences, since 2001 he has expanded beyond his personal life to depict city conditions and globalization. In City disqualified (2002), he creates collages of a deserted world from images from which he has removed all traces of cars and people. In “Disappearing Landscape” (2007), he poses a new form of moving images between video art and cinema via a micro-biographical approach, while in the video work “Dwelling” (2014), he questions how living can be possible in relation to the life situations of the current world. He has incorporated some of his most recent works, such as ‘Towards Darkness’ and ‘Towards Lightness’, into immersive exhibitions with the intention of challenging the public to reflect on perception and the existential nature of images.
It is indeed an honor to be able to represent Taiwan. The exhibition will focus on “the politics of cartography”, “everyday wars” and “everyday life in wars”, questioning the issues of living in relation to contemporary life situations. I would like to thank all members of the nominating committee, TFAM director Jun-Jieh Wang and curator Abby Chen for this opportunity.
Yuan Goang-Ming
Abby Chen previously worked with Yuan for After Hope: Videos of the Resistance, presented by the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco in 2021. Regarding their second collaboration, Chen says, “I am deeply touched by the story that Yuan Goang-ming told about the song his father sang and his subsequent awareness of its significance later in life. . We only come to understand the mysteries of our childhood over time. By reliving aspects of time experienced by our parents, we come to know history not just as a simple timeline, but as real as a scent in the air. We are going through history today. What seemed unthinkable ten years ago has become not only conceivable but also a tangible reality. Our collaboration will delve into the realms of intimate anxiety and hope. Yuan will bring new commissioned works to Venice. We will explore time as a changing habitat, normality as a form of resistance, in another year of great uncertainty and division.
The selection jury; with representatives including independent curators, art critics and experts from diverse backgrounds and generations; remarks: “During Yuan Goang-ming’s nearly 40-year career, he has fully embodied a relentless exploration of new media art. A refined and poetic visual language is woven throughout his work, which not only reflects the common awareness of the existence of the Taiwanese people, but also demonstrates a universality that transcends regional differences. In the post-pandemic era, it is deeply significant to present such an artist in Venice, whose work has deeply portrayed the changes Taiwan has undergone.
