Taipei, 31 May 2011 – The winners of the 9th annual Taishin Arts Awards were announced on May 11th, 2011 and attended by the fifteen finalists and nine international jury members.
This year’s winner of the Visual Arts Award is Chou, Yu-Cheng for his exhibition “TOA Lighting,” a conceptual art project that made no simple aesthetic objects, but instead took an approach to reveal various institutional systems, upholstering the meaning and production of art.
The recipient of the Performing Arts Award is the Century Contemporary Dance Company for their tenth anniversary production “Igor Stravinsky’s Les Noces/ Le Sacre du Printemps.” The dance represents a heroic attempt of the company’s art director Yao, Shu-Fen, whose innovative choreography pays tribute to Stravinsky’s original music as well as poses challenges to the conventional dance and performances.
Mr Upsidedown – Huang, Ming-Zheng’s “Transparent Country” unanimously won the heart of the jury of the 9th Taishin Arts Awards and is thus granted the Jury’s Special Award. Huang’s unique combination of a wide range of both art-related and non-art activities has made his circus-oriented performance a total work of art that crosses disciplines, audiences, and cultural boundaries.
The 9th Taishin Arts Award selects the best presented visual art exhibition and performing art production that took place in Taiwan during the year 2010. With the Performing Arts Award and the Visual Arts Award, each worth NT $1 million (USD 33,000), and the Jury’s Special Award for NT $300,000 (USD 9,900), the Taishin Arts Award remains the highest monetary award for contemporary arts in Taiwan. Bearing the mission to nurture and support contemporary art in Taiwan, the Award aims at increasing the visibility of Taiwanese contemporary art domestically and internationally.
In line with the design of the Taishin Arts Award, an international jury session has been called upon to select the award winners. This year’s international jury members include Paul King, co-founder of White Bird, and board chair of Dance/USA (USA); Leisa Shelton, trainer, director, curator and performer, lecturer in postgraduate Theatre Making in VCAM (Australia); Xu, Shu-Ya composer and president of Shanghai Conservatory of Music (China); Stephan Berg, director of Kunstmuseum Bonn (Germany); Yuji Akimoto, director of 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (Japan). The Taiwanese final-selection jury included Keng, Yi-Wei , Artistic Director of Taipei Arts Festival 2012; Chao, Yu-Ling, Associate Professor of Drama Department, National Taiwan University of Arts; Lin Ping, Art Director of Stock 20 and Professor of Fine Arts & Curatorial Program, Tunghai University; Chen Horng-Yi, Assistant Professor of Doctoral Program in Art Creation and Theory, Tainan National University. This final selection jury team also visited the exhibition at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts. They announced this year’s winners of the Visual Arts and Performing Arts annual award. At the same time, the Special Jury Award winner is chosen from one of the two categories. This special award continues the contemporary spirit in boundary dissolving.
The winners of the 9th Taishin Arts Award also seem to correspond to the distinctive features of the Taishin Arts Award. Chou, Yu-Cheng’s piece reflects the interaction of the artist’s role under the working system of capitalism. As such, the Taishin Financial Holding Co., Ltd. not only upholds the corporate responsibility toward society, but the Taishin Arts Award also actively seeks out the courage to face prospective issues and their social effects. Yao, Shu-Fen’s “Les Noces/ Le Sacre du Printemps,” a result of her decade’s hard work, echoes the Taishin Arts Award’s determination to cultivate artistic cultures in Taiwan over the past decade. Huang, Ming-Zheng’s (aka Mr. Upsidedown) piece highlights most explicitly the Taishin Arts Award’s core value in dissolving the once-rigidly defined boundaries between different artistic disciplines and cultures.
The 9th Taishin Arts Award Exhibition, showcasing the documentation of the art exhibitions of the “Top 5 Visual Arts,” and the performances of the “Top 10 Performing Arts” nominated by quarterly primaries and year-end observation sessions, will be on view in the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts throughout June 12th, 2011.