Opening on November 18, the 13th Taipei Biennial explores the precarious post-pandemic  state of our societies. Under the title ‘Small World’, over 50 international artists – including Lai Chih-Sheng (Taipei), Pio Abad (London), and Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork (Los Angeles) – are presenting works that engage with our changing built environment. The biennial also places a focus on music and sound to examine new ways of listening, gathering, and improvising. Concurrent to the biennial, many galleries throughout the city are presenting their final exhibitions of the year. These seven shows resonate with the themes of ‘Small World’.

Chen Chieh-jen
‘Her and Her Children – Introduction and Prologue’
Lin & Lin Gallery
Through November 25, 2023

A prominent figure in the development of Taiwanese conceptual art, Chen Chieh-jen is known for his socially engaged films and photography. This solo show at Lin & Lin Gallery presents his latest video works, In a World Losing Multiple Worlds I (2022) and Worn Away (2022–23), alongside a series of photographs and sketches that make up a long-term project entitled ‘Her and Her Children’. The videos depict the plight of individuals being seen as disposable subjects in an age of hypercapitalism. The artist shows solitary figures to illustrate what he deems the ‘neocolonial caste system,’ a specific reality resulting from exacerbated economic inequality. The title of the project also serves as a reminder of the ways in which our lives – and the fate of the world – are interconnected across generations.

Rao Fu
‘Flaming Images’
Mind Set Art Center
Through November 24, 2023

Having been based in Dresden, Germany for more than two decades, Chinese artist Rao Fu’s unique style is one of cultural hybridity – one that is informed by Chinese landscape painting and calligraphy as well as various European painting traditions, including Neo-expressionism and the German movement Die Brücke. His oil paintings are characterized by a vivid, saturated palette where ghostly figures emerge from epic landscapes, as reflected in the new works on view in ‘Flaming Images’. The exhibition ­– Rao’s second solo show in Taipei – also features watercolors and ceramics, all of which come together to muse upon a disorientation and unease toward the environmental exploitation of the world.

Amol K. Patil
‘Lines Between the City’
TKG+ Projects
Through January 27, 2024

Marking Mumbai- and Amsterdam-based artist Amol K. Patil’s debut at TKG+ Projects, ‘Lines Between the City’ features video works and intimate bronze sculptures that revolve around themes of class and labor conditions in India. Patil’s ongoing explorations of such themes often center specifically around the chawl, a type of building similar to a tenement and specific to western India. Chawls were initially constructed to provide social housing for factory workers, but some have become gentrified and are now even considered as middle-class housing. In this exhibition, Patil highlights the consequences of urban sprawling and the uneven distribution of public resources.

‘Return to the Wilderness – The Wanderers’ Songs of Gazing Back at Nature’
Liang Gallery
Through December 3, 2023

Independent Taiwanese curator Eva Lin, who curated the public program for the 2020 Taipei Biennial, brings together five contemporary Indigenous Taiwanese artists for ‘Return to the Wilderness’. Belonging to different tribes, each of these artists left their home community at some point only to eventually return – a homecoming that reflects a discontent with contemporary society as well as a desire to reconnect with one’s roots and the broader natural environment. This exhibition showcases a variety of mediums, such as textiles, sculptures, and paintings, but, more importantly, it explores the Indigenous contexts, cultures, and aesthetics of Taiwan today.

Marck
‘Marck’s Playground’
Bluerider Art
Through January 7, 2024

Swiss artist Marck focuses on video sculpture, creating elaborate structures to contain screens playing his looped footage. The subjects of his videos are mostly women, who are shown interacting with the confines of his sculptural frames. For example, the iron frame produced for Clockwork (2023) includes a moving pendulum that the video’s subject repeatedly ducks and moves away from as it swings. Other works on view are from Marck’s new ‘Made in Taiwan’ series (2023), which were created during a month-long stay as a resident artist at the gallery. His workspace is also on display, offering insights into his creative process.

Li Jiun-Yang
‘Roles & Rituals’
Beyond Gallery
Through January 13, 2024

‘Roles & Rituals’ is an ambitious survey show of self-taught Taiwanese artist Li Jiun-Yang with over 100 works spanning his nearly three-decade-long career. Engaging deeply with Taiwanese folklore and tradition, Li explores a vibrant contemporary folk aesthetic through painting, sculpture, and installation. For example, the new acrylic painting Hands with Puppets Heads and Taiji (2023) depicts the open palms of a pair of hands wearing finger puppets of deities and mythical beings. Taiwan has a rich tradition of puppetry, the most well-known of which is operatic glove puppetry, also referred to as palm puppetry – a seemingly simple art form that in fact requires great skill and knowledge, like the widely practiced martial art of taiji boxing, otherwise known as tai chi. Li is also included in this year’s Taipei Biennial, presenting a local perspective on mythmaking and world-building.

Chen Yun
‘Entering the Dissipating Fog of Fragments Light’
Yiri Arts
Through December 2, 2023

In her second solo exhibition with Yiri Arts, Taiwanese painter Chen Yun presents new paintings that explore notions of memory and sensation through visual motifs related to daily life. Each work comprises two-to-four individually painted canvases to form visual montages: One canvas always features figures while the others are painted with abstract, sometimes geometric, patterns. Yun draws inspiration from her own memories and dreams, and her paintings’ long poetic titles, such as Parallel. Thoughts linger at the pauses amid the layers of transformation (2023), suggest specific moments in ambiguous narratives. Yet the final forms allow for individual projection, and some paintings are even presented with olfactory artworks, offering an engagement with other sensory perceptions and another way of triggering mental associations.

Annette An-Jen Liu is a Taiwanese writer and curator working between Taipei and New York City. Her writing can be found in ArtAsiaPacific, Art Monthly Australasia, Magnum Photos, Ocula, and Musée Magazine, among others.

Published on November 16, 2023.

Caption for full-bleed image: Installation view of ‘Return to the Wilderness – The Wanderers’ Songs of Gazing Back at Nature’. Courtesy of Liang Gallery.