Taoyuan, Taiwan, 21 March 2023 - The 2023 Taoyuan International Art Award (TIAA), organised by Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts (TMoFA), Taiwan, selected 15 finalists in last June to participate in the exhibition and compete the awards. After a thorough secondary review by the international panel, an award ceremony was held on 21 March to reveal the final winners on the spot. The Grand Award goes to "Pull Up" by Delphine Pouillé (France), while "Migran-t, First skin: Nostalgia" by Belén Santamarina (Argentina), "I CAN NOT BE WITH YOU" by Jiao Yan (China), "The Shadow Lands Yonder" by Lee Kai-chung (Hong Kong) are the three winners of Honorable Mention, and Wang Yen-ran (Taiwan) is awarded Sojourn Award. The 15 selected artworks, including the award-winning pieces, will be exhibited from 21 March to 30 April at Taoyuan Arts Center.
The Grand Award goes to "Pull Up" by Delphine Pouillé (France).
French artist, Delphine Pouillé, has long developed a practice centered on the body, combining sculpture and drawing. The award-winning work "Pull Up" is a hybrid piece in which two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality coexist. The notion of exhaustion is at the heart of the project. If the voided figure of the suspended body is shown at full physical exertion, its “positive”, puny counterpart lies wrecked on the ground, conveying a sense of derailment or crash. The Grand Award winner will receive NT$600,000. Belén Santamarina of Argentina in the Honorable Mention for " Migran-t, First skin: Nostalgia", in which the artist embroidered on drawings, poems and words written in a private diary, or words from books or songs using hair picked up after grooming, embroidering on sheets, and implanting the experience of migration and being in a different place; Chinese artist Jiao Yan's video work "I CAN NOT BE WITH YOU" started with word searches on China’s website for missing persons. The artist contemplates ways to document these individuals and adopts anthropological imaging methods to commence this photography project, including herself in the works, expressing shattered stories and nuanced emotions, re-presenting the images of missing per sons. This work explores the power structures behind the seemingly normal social phenomenon. Hong Kong artist Lee Kai-chung positions the perspective in early-
20th-century Manchuria, and explores the complex process of identity "transition" under sudden political changes through video and creative writing based on a documentary review. The "Sojourn Award" aims to reward Taiwanese artists with NT$250,000 to travel abroad to observe and expand their international horizons, and this year's winner Wang Yen-ran's work "Productivity Project 2023" uses a "copying" action with a reference model to produce a large number of IKEA mugs by hand, in an attempt to explore how ceramics creators should deal with themselves in the era of globalized industrial mass production.
"Migran-t, First skin: Nostalgia" by Belén Santamarina (Argentina) is one of the three winners of Honorable Mention.
"Productivity Project 2023" by Wang Yen-ran (Taiwan) is awarded Sojourn Award.
TIAA is one of the major contemporary art competitions in Taiwan. This edition, it received overwhelming response from 62 countries, with more than 687 artists submitting their works for the preliminary review, a 25% increase in the total number of submissions compared to the previous edition. This indicates that TIAA has received widespread attention from international art professionals and creators since it placed an international call for entries in 2021 for the first time. The 15 selected art works are from Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Syria, France, the United States, Brazil, Argentina and Peru with a wide coverage of various fields and forms, including graphic creation, installation, video and digital art, and art projects. The next call for entries will be announced at the end of this year (2023).
Group photo of Shan-Cheng CHANG, Mayor of Taoyuan City, jury members and participated artists
The international jury has been a unique feature of TIAA. The jury of the preliminary review was composed of Christine MACEL, Chief Curator of the 57th Venice Biennale; Hanru HOU, former Director of MAXXI; Cosmin COSTINAS, Curator of the 2024 Sydney Biennial; independent curator Nobuo TAKAMORI and Professor Chun Lan LIU of National Taiwan University of the Arts, who was also the former director of the TMoFA. While the preliminary review was implemented online, the secondary review was implemented on-site, and the finals jury consisted of Hanru HOU, Cosmin COSTINAS, Jin-suk SUH, Director of the Ulsan Museum of Arts, South Korea; Kuang-Yi CHEN, Dean of College of Fine Arts, National Taiwan University of Arts; and independent curator Chia Chi Jason WANG.
Hanru HOU said, "An international perspective, local creation and contemplation are the common outstanding features of these award-winning artists. Meanwhile, these works also reflect the ambition of TMoFA as an urban art museum.”
“TMoFA presents a vital art exchange orientation in such an award-curated layout. The jury is composed of worldrenowned curators and art critics, and the international network of the TMoFA and the diversity of further collaboration are enhanced at this atmosphere. Also, artists can be explored and exchange with each other in the selection process.” says the acting Director of TMoFA, Lijuan WANG.
The finals jury consisted of independent curator Chia Chi Jason WANG; Kuang-Yi CHEN, Dean of College of Fine Arts, National Taiwan University of Arts; Lijuan WANG, the acting Director of TMoFA; Hanru HOU, former Director of MAXXI; COSTINAS, Curator of the 2024 Sydney Biennial; and Jin-suk SUH, Director of the Ulsan Museum of Arts, South Korea (from the left) .
To coincide with the opening of the exhibition on 21 March, TMoFA also organized an international forum. The panelists included Hanru HOU, Jin-suk SUH and Chia Chi Jason WANG, and was moderated by Kuang-Yi CHEN, Dean of the College of Fine Arts, National Taiwan University of the Arts. They revisited the relationship between art awards and art forms and institutional extensions, in the angle of the management of urban art museums and the observation of contemporary art spectrum.
To coincide with the opening of the exhibition on 21 March, TMoFA also organized an international forum. The panelists included Hanru HOU, Jin-suk SUH and Chia Chi Jason WANG, and was moderated by Kuang-Yi CHEN, Dean of the College of Fine Arts, National Taiwan University of the Arts.
The main building of TMoFA is scheduled to open in 2025. The art museum, which has been established in 2018, continues to operate in advance without hardware by means of software and organization. The pivotal TIAA therefore is one of the projects to establish international networking and global vision. TIAA operates on the biennial basis in the hope of giving artists more time to create and prepare the exhibition. The Exhibition of 2023 TIAA is opened to public from 21 March 2023, and will run to 30 April. A series of exclusive onsite tours will be put in place, all details please refer to the website and Facebook page of TMoFA.
