It´s all over now baby WU? /  by fariba mosleh

On Saturday the artists of the project W(H)O IS WU? gathered together for a more than interesting and intense talk. Questions on the exhibition and the project itself as well as on the discourse of art and photography in Taiwan and Europe were discussed. The artists talked about the expectations and experiences they made through the process of the project, about their ideas and wishes for the exhibition in Vienna. It brought up general questions of emerging artist´s practice in Taiwan and Austria. The question of language skills for an international exchange like this is always part of it.

The project - thanx to the cooperating partners in Taiwan as the studio of Wolong29, Waley Art Space and the artists - exceeds all our expectations!
The exhibition at Taipei finished yesterday, we packed the works for going to Austria***

So part one of W(H)O IS WU? is over, BUT part two is under construction - we are looking forward to the exhibition in Austria, which the Taiwanese artists hopefully will join and the further development of the project and artworks.

See you soon* and thanx for being part of W(H)O IS WU? 

Further information on the project progress in Vienna you find under NEWS.

On Exhibit* /  by fariba mosleh

Seven Austrian and Taiwanese visual artists did a collaboration - 4 series of over-worked photography, two performance videos and one series of colored drawings dealing with W(H)O IS WU and beyond are on display now at Waley Art Space in Taipei. The cooperation of the artists reached its goal in going into a deep dialogue on each artist´s artistic practice and their different approaches. 
We are happy about the great opening on Sunday which many people joined. 
As we are current residents in the third floor of the gallery we can enjoy the talks with people visiting the exhibition. In the recent days we had a lot of deeply interesting talks, discussions and exchange with other artists and art interested visitors. Especially the topic of photo-overworking raises exciting questions.
Today the local TV News were at the exhibition - what a fun to (try to) give an interview in Chinese*

If you happen to stay in Taipei have a look to the exhibition which is opened until Sunday, 10th of May 2015. Thanx for coming*

Stop reading ... /  by fariba mosleh

... come to Waley Art Space an have a LOOK!
The last days art works have been finished and the exhibition W(H)O IS WU? is finally settled.
4 Taiwanese artists and 3 Austrian artists went into dialogue, have been working together and now show their reflections on WHO IS WHO or ...
Everybody welcome to the opening tomorrow 3 pm.

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Family in Residence* /  by fariba mosleh

Yeah* we finally physically arrived at Waley Art Gallery in Taipei for our artist and curator in residence stay. It´s such a great space and a wonderful team. We are honored to work with them!
So it´s my turn to prepare the exhibition W(H)O IS WU? for the opening on sunday ...

And it´s time to introduce you to the last artist participating in the upcoming exhibition. 
The Taipei born and based visual artist CHOU Ming-Yi 鷺 츠 誼.He is a graduate in painting, currently working with drawing, sculpture and printmaking. In his recent works he deals with topics of memory and self experience. For our project he has chosen to work on childhood experience of western fairy tales and the european memories of Made in Taiwan - era. Quite exciting drawings are in progress.

Who is in WU? Part 3 /  by fariba mosleh

We are very happy too about the participation of CHANG, Chih-Chung 張致中 in our project. C.C. Chang is a Kaohsiung born and Taipei based visual artist who basically works with mixed-media but currently focuses on the drawing. For him the line combines drawing and writing, concept and form.
For W(H)O IS WU? he has chosen to over-work photos taken in the Chinese influenced urban sceneries of Vienna adding his linear drawings, symbols and languages indicating his Taiwanese reflections on both (un)familiar scenarios of a cultural fusion as well as conflict. 
As he hasn´t been to Austria yet he does this more instinctively and as expression of his usual artistic practice as C.C. Chang draws and writes „to learn, understand and memorize the world“ as he states.
Click here for Videos by C.C. Chang.

Besides, on our trip through southern Taiwan yesterday we´ve been invited at a High School in Tainan to present our Project W(H)O IS WU? and the aim of our stay. It was a pleasure!
Thanx to the Coolidge Family for the great experiences in Tainan.

Artists in W(H)O IS WU? - Part 2 /  by fariba mosleh

The Taiwanese photographer Chi, Erh-Hsuen 紀而軒 contributes to our projects through providing original works of his 2014 black and white series of photographic quotes of urban daily life in Taiwan. These still lifes show different series of food-related issues, boxes as the icon of international exchange for instance. The analog and self-developed photos deal with contrasts and composition. There are no humans to see on the photos, but they are present through their traces of leftover food or arrangements of tables, seats and so on. The pics show dynamics, multiple senses and uses of objects and therefore is a quite exciting series to be over-worked and get in dialogue with another artist´s perspective.

Concerning the selection of local artists I have do state that as in my former exhibitions and interview series in Vienna - the focus lies on so called INvisible (or emerging) Artists - young, ambitious artistic positions of artists that have a serious artistic practice after finishing their academic education. Nevertheless mostly they do not yet have a great visibility within the international art scene or the art market. 

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Moving ON* /  by fariba mosleh

I would like to introduce you to the work of Chen, Dai-Roo 陳代如  - a Taipei based artist who became part of our project. Dai is Master of Fine Arts of the University of Taipei, in her recent art works she is dealing with socio-political relationships within her family´s history focussing related objects and architecture through the media of photography and installation. For W(H)O IS WU? Dai has provided abstract, architectural parts of her quatriptychon series dealing with her grandfather, a former Chinese general and their personal relationship. These photos depict parts of former military housings around Taipei, which nowadays are left abandoned. Dai herself has recently started to work with photo-overpainting, so we are not only having an interesting exchange concerning the content but also the media of overworking photography itself.

Florian Nitsch has started working with their dialogue´s impressions and these photos; through overpainting them a quite intimate and sensitive cooperation is in progress.

Meanwhile we have closed down our temporary open studio at Wolong29. We had an intensive and fruitful working time in that oldest house of National Taipei University of Education (former dormitory of teachers, dating back to Japanese occupation period). Some works are already finished, some artists are continuing to work on their contributions for the exhibition. 

On over-worked photography* /  by fariba mosleh

Well, overworking ones artist´s photos through drawing, painting or other media has quite a long history and many artists have a period or a series of works in their ouvre where they tried this expression (see Gerhard Richter, Arnulf Rainer, Shirin Neshat, Franz West, Albert Oehlen, etc.).

We experienced that the medium of over-painted or over-worked photography is very adequate for the project W(H)O IS WU?; through its specific mediality the over-painted photography is open for conceptual and collective approaches. Several heterogeneous perspectives are possible simultaneously and they are mutual depended. That kind of artistic method has a broad and comprehensive choice of selection. We do understand the method of over-painted photography as a conceptual undertaking. Topics as historicity, copyright, media and the relation of painting and photography are scrutinized. The series of photos can function as the documentary, realistic, objective part, the painting as counterpart and vice versa. From the structural perspective the trans-medial over-painted photography is quite similar to the trans-cultural approach of the project W(H)O IS WU? itself.

On the long run this approach explicitly shall cross over to other media such as performance, installation, sound or video art. 

For the current cooperation and the exhibition in May photo works from four different artists are over-worked by two visual artists.
The W(H)O IS WU? exhibition at Waley Art Gallery will not just present over-worked photography but also other austro-taiwanese artistic encounters*

 

On the run* /  by fariba mosleh

We´ve already been starting the 2nd week at our Wolong29 Studio. The main materials of photographs and the related storys have been discussed and exchanged - now they are ready to be over-worked.

In the following blog-entries I am going to introduce you into our concept of W(H)O IS WU? Why are we focussing on the over-painted photography in order to collaborate with other artists and I would like to present the participating Taiwanese artists to you.

By the way, the Austrian artists Mahdie Bayat and the composer Johannes Kretz are currently residing in Taipei. They have already been to Taiwan several times for working on collaborative music projects. For W(H)O IS WU? they deal with the theme of pollution vs. green city / nature vs. urbanity and vice versa; they produced a short video with the title act pure for our exhibition in May.

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What goes around comes around* /  by fariba mosleh

Well, haven´t I just written about the roller coaster of feelings concerning this project? It goes on - one day it seems that the project can´t be a collaborative one, the other day your gallery owner knocks on your studio´s door and presents to you four well informed Taipei based young emerging artists who are highly interested into working on W(H)O IS WU?

For hours they were presenting us their works and we´ve been discussing in Chinese, English and even German what a collaborative work, especially through the medium of overworked photography could look like - mutually referring to questions of W(H)O IS WU? 

So I would like to put it as Lao Tze once did - what goes around comes around!
Let´s concentrate on artistic practice. Looking forward to getting to know the works of the artists better and introducing them to you. Thanx to Olivia and Paul from Waley Art Space for making the bridge!

What goes up must come down* /  by fariba mosleh

Conceptualizing a collaborative art project and traveling around half of the world for working together with local artists in 2015 sometimes seems to be a ridiculous idea. We got great support from Austria and the Taiwanese people are cordially welcoming us; we are invited at a great working space as well as doing an exhibition in a wonderful gallery - after hours of conversations on the contemporary art scene and artist´s works with artists and curators. We put so much energy into W(H)O IS WU? and then all of a sudden it seems as we are the only eurocentric WU 無 (literally meaning „nothing“) - when the artists who conceptually fit into the project all at once change their minds and stop communicating with us ...
This means we were moving to our great temporary atelier at Wolong29 this monday without participating artists and material to work on. Yes, there are some contacts open, but nothing fixed.

Still, we won´t give up and are (re-)considering our concept and having exchange with other Europeans and and Austrians who have been working in Taiwan - most reactions: „Welcome to Taiwan!“ 

What´s the missing link? We want to learn more about it ... As one of the major points within our concept states „on-site adapting the project“ - we are working on Plan B.
So Florian has started to work on his own reflections on W(H)O IS WU? while people interested in our projects are visiting our atelier.

Taipei artist challenge* /  by fariba mosleh

The development of our project concerning the collaboration with the compatible artists is really exciting. Yesterday we made a great experience.

After an intense and interesting talk the Taiwanese artist 丘智華 Chiu Chih－Hua, current resident at Bamboo Curtain Studio will be the first artist who is fixed for the project W(H)O IS WU? 

We are very happy about the fact that the works Chiu provides for W(H)O IS WU? really fit into the conceptual contents Florian Nitsch dealed within his recent works and therefore is an authentic continuation of their artistic practice.
Chiu´s topics are dealing with urbanity, architecture and distance to everyday life. Although he loves the countryside he works with the meanings of the city in his artworks - with his own constructed Taipei in a sensitive and highly qualitative way. Taipei gets more quiet, clean and less of advertisement. Perfect for Florian to overwork it and reuse Chiu´s concept again in another way.

Looking forward to the cooperation*
AND to moving into our temporary studio at 臥龍二九 Wolong29 tomorrow*

By the way today we found out that Florian Nitsch is one of the possible WU 無 but that´s another story ...

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Exhibition settled* /  by fariba mosleh

It´s quite a challenge, but we have good news:

Yesterday our local expert and Taipei-based curator 葉家銘 Yeh Chia-Ming introduced us to Paul Peng, head of 水谷藝術 Waley Art Space, a Gallery in Wanhua district of Taipei. We got a very interesting introduction in the work of the young space and its engagement with local emerging artists as well as the establishment of a residency program and their cultural work with the local community. A sophisticated space with vision and future for sure.

They invited us to become their first European residents and we will open the final W(H)O IS WU? exhibition in Taipei at 水谷藝術 Waley Art on 3rd of May 2015, what makes us very happy!

During the duration of the exhibition we will be artist family in residence at Waley Art till we leave for Austria*

So let´s start working at the Wolong29 Atelier :) 

Me with Olivia, gallery assistant and Paul, director.

Me with Olivia, gallery assistant and Paul, director.

1st Meeting at the Working Space /  by fariba mosleh

Another day full of art spaces and artists of different backgrounds and generations. We are very happy about our first official meeting with the department of creative industry magement at the National Taiwan University of Education, who are providing their gallery at 臥龍二九(Wolong 29) as our studio for the following two weeks. Today we´ve been presenting our concept and ideas on the project W(H)O IS WU? for our studio hosts and some artists who also have their studios at Wolong29.

In the afternoon we were happy to get to know the TheCube Art Project Space - an exciting initiative with multiple international exhibiting projects with focus on video.

We are looking forward to open our studio on monday, starting the atelier work an welcome taipei-based artists to join us to develop our concept and work together with mixed media to find possible answers and contributions on the discourse of W(H)O IS WU?

(c) Wolong29

(c) Wolong29

ART-Quickie* /  by fariba mosleh

 

10 days in Taipei. After writing many mails,  having lots of appointments with local artists, curators and staff at art institutions as well as visiting art museums, artist villages, off-spaces and on-spaces in downtown and suburban areas we finally found a great space for becoming our temporary studio for working on our project W(H)O IS WU?

臥龍二九(Wolong 29) Gallery offers us their space for the following weeks, where we will welcome local artists to work together with us, examining and developing our concept and producing an exciting transcultural dialogue via mixed artistic media.

Our trip to Taipei and the project involved turns out to be a kind of art-quickie - by the means of exploring the local contemporary art scene in terms of on- and off-spaces, art students, graduates and international artists as well as theorists and curators within a very short time. On the one hand it can just be an research onto a certain level, but we are very thankful for the Taipei-based cultural producers who provide us a deeper understanding not just of the art scene but also Taiwan and its people in general.