Meridians of Region
Taiwan and the Philippines, two geographically similar but seemingly unrelated places have in fact had artistic exchanges for a long time: there are traces of mutual exchange from the Xiamen Fine Arts College in the 1920s and 1930s during the 20th century to religious totems, and abstract painting trends in Taiwan in the 1950s and 1960s closely related to the development of local art in the Philippines, with frequent mutual visits and exhibitions by artists or collectives. This publication surveys the colonial background of Taiwan and the Philippines from the perspective of South Pacific Islands, and art stirred up by the geopolitics of marine culture, explored from methods of art history, anthropology, and linguistics in observing mutual reference and resonance of contemporary art exchanges between these two places. The book is organized by a research team, with Patrick D. Flores, well-known international curator and professor of Art Studies in the Department of Art Studies at the University of the Philippines, and Taiwanese art historian Chiang Po-shin, and holds significance in an arts curation shift towards marine history under globalization.
(For more information, please contact: tvaa.tainan@gmail.com)