[press release]
Grand Prize winner:
Altering Nativism—Sound Cultures in Post-War Taiwan by The CubeProject Space
Annual winners:
Long River by WCdance
An Uncanny Tomorrow by YUAN Goang-Ming
Home: Records of the Hongmaogang Village Relocation by CHEN Po-I
The Monk from Tang Dynasty by TSAI Ming-Liang
Supported by Taishin Financial Holding, the prestigious Taiwanese contemporary art award, the Taishin Arts Award, announced the winner of its Grand Prize of 1.5 million TWD. The chairman of the Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture, Mr. Simon Cheng, announced the winner and presented the prize on June 13 as the honor went to Altering Nativism—Sound Cultures in Post-War Taiwan, co-curated by Amy Cheng of TheCube Project Space, Jeph Lo, and Ho Tung-Hung. Board director, Ms. Lin Mun-Lee, a major force in the founding of the award 14 years ago, made the following statement while presenting the prizes to the five winners, “The Taishin Arts Award is the most significant award of contemporary art in Taiwan. The selection is made through various stages throughout the year. Being able to make it to the five winners is really difficult. No matter who is the winner of the Grand Prize today, everyone here is already the finest artists in Taiwan.”
The Grand Prize was selected from the five award recipients by the international final selection committee, which was formed by five international and Taiwanese jurors, including Chiu Kun-Liang, former Chairman of the Council for Cultural Affairs and currently Professor at the Taipei National University of the Arts; Kuo Liang-Ting, art critic and Adjunct Lecturer at the Taipei National University of the Arts; Guo Jau-Lan, independent curator, arts critic and Adjunct Professor at the Taipei National University of Arts; Chiaki Soma, Representative Director of Arts and Commons Tokyo; and Christian Rizzo, the Director of Centre Chorégraphique National of Montpellier, France. After consecutive discussions that lasted three days and meetings with the artists, the jurors had a twelve-hour debate on the last day and selected the Grand Prize winner from the five award recipients.
The Taishin Arts Award is known for its innovative selection processes, including active nomination, criticism writing, and interdisciplinary evaluation and selection. As of today, the Award provides the highest prize money in Taiwan, presents five Award Winners, and selects one Grand Prize from the award recipients. As the Grand Prize winner is awarded million TWD, the other four winners are also awarded half a million each, bringing the total amount of the prize money to 3.5 million TWD.
This year, the award ceremony collaborated with TEDxTaipei for the second time, and invited the five award winners to speak in person. Through the form of TED talks and the live streaming of the talks online, it allowed a wider audience to know the artists and understand their creative ideas. Video documentations of the talks will also be available in both Chinese and English online for the global audience after the award ceremony.
Centering on the five winner works while introducing the other nine selected works, the 13th Taishin Arts Award Exhibition is now on view at the Museum of National Taipei University of Education (MoNTUE) until July 26. Details of related events and activities can be found on the website of Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture.