The 23rd Taishin Arts Award – the Grand Prize Battle City: Finale, Battle City 2: Economic Miracle (screenshot) by CHANG Li-Ren
CHANG Li-Ren has won the Annual Grand Prize of the 23rd Taishin Arts Awards, as announced in Taipei on May 24. CHANG was awarded NTD 1.5 million for his 14-year journey exploring battle narratives of resistance and defense, culminating in Battle City: Finale, which was finally presented at MoNTUE last year. Additionally, NI Xiang won in the Visual Arts category, and flowers bloom on the dead end x HSU Peng in the Performing Arts category, each receiving NTD 1 million. This year’s awarded works are notably unified by their deeply personal perspectives, using individual experiences to illuminate broader societal and cultural issues.
Established in 2002, the Taishin Arts Award is one of Taiwan’s most prestigious honors in the fields of contemporary art and culture. It recognizes outstanding works of performance, visual, and transdisciplinary art presented in Taiwan during the preceding year.
This year, all three awarded projects draw from personal histories and lived experiences to shed light on broader societal issues, including personal defiance against authoritarianism, media violence, existential challenges, long-term and illness care, and women’s situations in a patriarchal society. Through the use of diverse media that merge reality and virtuality, these works invite viewers into deep contemplation.
The 23rd Taishin Arts Award – the Grand Prize Battle City: Finale by CHANG Li-Ren, Photo by Sean Wang
CHANG Li-Ren brought home the Grand Prize with Battle City: Finale, which marked the culmination of a 14-year journey focused on battle narratives of resistance and defense. In 2024, the artist made a full debut at MoNTUE, showcasing all three episodes of the trilogy along with figures, models, sets, and manuscripts from the production, quickly drawing public attention. Using inexpensive materials and low-tech approaches, CHANG challenges conventional ideas about how artists can persist, maintain autonomy, and uphold their ideals within the confines of societal norms and collective values.
The jury noted that “CHANG Li-Ren’s artistic practice treats art as a way of life, embodying ‘the autonomy of artistic creation.’” They further remarked that “through a parodic trilogy centered on ‘ordinary people,’ he examines contemporary geopolitics on both microscopic and macroscopic scales. Using ‘battle’ as a metaphor, his work conveys individual resistance against global hegemonies, media violence, and existential conundrums, offering an allegorical reflection on the complexities of our shared realities.”
The 23rd Taishin Arts Award – the Visual Arts Award Everyone came to see you—Ni Xiang Solo Exhibition by NI Xiang, Free Time (screenshot), Image courtesy of the artist and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum
The 23rd Taishin Arts Award – the Visual Arts Award Everyone came to see you—Ni Xiang Solo Exhibition by NI Xiang, Image courtesy of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum
The Visual Arts winner, NI Xiang, was recognized for his solo exhibition Everyone came to see you, held at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Drawing from personal experience, NI employed large-scale installations and video works that, though seemingly chaotic and whimsical at first glance, confront reality and address critical social issues, such as elder care, the experience of being a patient companion, and the boundary between life and death, immersing viewers in an idiosyncratic artistic appeal through his “hoarding aesthetics.”
According to the jury, the work was recognized for its “singular aesthetics of disorder by recomposing found and hoarded objects from his family home.” They also remarked that “the project employs black humor to make a satirical and self-deprecating criticism of lived reality, society, and its institutions,” and commended “the collage and assemblage of excessive objects as both material and symbol, which speak of the erosion of dreams and the state of powerlessness, are profoundly moving.”
The 23rd Taishin Arts Award – the Performing Arts Award Great-Grand Rat-Po-Tai (So Old) Is Sleeping Next To A Landscape Painting, Diligently & Stingily Snoring——But There Is No Landscape Painting! by flowers bloom on the dead end x HSU Peng, Photo by WU Yu-Ying
The 23rd Taishin Arts Award – the Performing Arts Award Great-Grand Rat-Po-Tai (So Old) Is Sleeping Next To A Landscape Painting, Diligently & Stingily Snoring——But There Is No Landscape Painting! by flowers bloom on the dead end x HSU Peng, Photo by WU Yu-Ying
The Performing Arts Award went to Great-Grand Rat-Po-Tai (So Old) Is Sleeping Next To A Landscape Painting, Diligently & Stingily Snoring——But There Is No Landscape Painting!, created by director-playwright HSU Peng, in collaboration with the theater collective flowers that bloom on the dead end. The production was staged in the century-old ancestral home of the Hsu family in Guoling, Zhongli. It intricately weaves a magical realist narrative centered on the lives of the women in the family. Hsu transforms mundane domestic trivialities and everyday fragments into a richly layered theatrical text through “sui sui nian” (碎碎唸), a murmuring-based recitation style, along with a meandering performative approach, skillfully merging the surrounding environment with the narrative. Through witty, sharp, and surreal imagination, the piece emerges as a critique of patriarchal norms, articulated from a distinct perspective informed by female poetics.
In the words of the jury, “this exuberantly fabular creation (…) breaths new and radical life into the domestic household — once constricted by the patriarchy of Hakka culture — by re-imagining the lived experiences of its women inhabitants, emancipating their sedimented voices and emotional world.” They also highlighted that “life and death in a Hakka family undergo subversive episodes of a queer romance staged in the ancestral hall, a transversal romp of culinary-human-animal enactments, and a portrait of intergenerational bonds that transcend species!”
Chaired by the esteemed U.S.-based art critic KAO Chien-Hui, this year’s final selection committee also included art critic CHANG Yun-Ting; theatre critic CHOU, Katherine Hui-Ling; HSU, Walter Jen-Hao; French choreographer Mathilde Monnier; Korean artist Park Chan-kyong; and Singaporean curator TANG Fu Kuen.
Full details about the winning works can be found on the official website of the 23rd Taishin Arts Award.
The 23rd Taishin Arts Award – The laureates of the three Awards have a group photo with the board directors of the Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture, and the Taishin Arts Award jurors and nominators