Taiwan’s prestigious Taishin Arts Award, a leading contemporary performing and visual arts prize, has announced its list of winners – including that of the overall Grand Prize, which this year brings with it a financial windfall of NTD1.5m (€43,300, the highest cash award in this arts category currently on offer in the country).
In a grand ceremony earlier this month, the winning project was revealed as Altering Nativism – Sound Cultures in Post-War Taiwan, a work co-curated by Amy Cheng of TheCube project space, Jeph Lo, and Ho Tung-Hung.
The full list of winners for the 13th Taishin Arts Award was as follows:
Grand Prize Winner:
Altering Nativism – Sound Cultures in Post-War Taiwan by TheCube project 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
This year, the award ceremony collaborated with TEDxTaipei for the second time, inviting the five winners onstage to present TED talks in person. These were live-streamed online, introducing a much wider audience to each artist’s creative processes and inspirations.
The Taishin Arts Award is renowned for its innovative and lengthy selection processes, comprising active nomination, critical writing, and interdisciplinary evaluation and selection. Through these various channels, the expert panel ultimately selects five Award Winners across different categories, and then selects one Grand Prize winner from among those five. The other four winners are awarded NTD500,000 (€14,400) each, bringing the total prize money awarded to NTD3.5m between all recipients.
The international and Taiwanese jurors making up the final selection committee in 2015 included Chiu Kun-Liang, former Chairman of the Council for Cultural Affairs and professor at the Taipei National University of the Arts; Kuo Liang-Ting, art critic and lecturer at Taipei NUA; Guo Jau-Lan, independent curator, critic and adjunct professor at Taipei NUA; Chiaki Soma, representative director of Arts and Commons Tokyo; and Christian Rizzo, director of Centre Chorégraphique National (Montpellier, France). After discussions lasting three days and various meetings with the artist themselves, the jurors selected the Grand Prize winner after a gruelling 12-hour debate on the final day of voting.
The resulting exhibition is now available to view at the Museum of National Taipei University of Education (MoNTUE) until 26 July, supported by award backer Taishin Financial Holding.