The Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture has announced the three winners at this year’s Taishin Arts Award. The prizes, now in their 18th edition, recognize the best contemporary performing and visual arts from Taiwan.
The annual Grand Prize – as well as NTD1.5m (€45,000) – went to Against Again Troupe for their work White Clear Song. Mixing theatre, folk music and archive materials, the piece tells the story of the White Terror, Taiwan’s period of martial law that lasted for almost 40 years. It was written and directed by Snow Huang, with music from Chiang Tao.
Commented the jury: “Transforming the heaviness of White Terror archives into a fluent, profound sound theatre, Against Again Troupe’s White Clear Song is an artful blend of story-telling, folk songs and reportage theatre…White Clear Song revisits history to relieve the individual’s grief after decades of silencing, to clearly summon the power of oral history, and to resist oblivion and apathy.”
Meanwhile, director Wang Shih-Wei’s work Masses collected the Performing Arts Award. The piece – made with choreographer Tien Hsiao-Tzu, sound designer Lee Tzu-Mei and light designer Helmi Fita – comments on the power of street protest. In its citation, the jury said “Masses takes the audience to re-experience and re-think the personal and the social of being in a street struggle.” The prize is worth NTD1m.
Finally, I-Hsuen Chen won the Visual Arts Award for Commissioned—I-Hsuen Chen Solo Exhibition at Hong-gah Museum. He also received NTD1m.
Stated the jury: “Chen turns the video installation into a vivid movie scene, bringing the real world into the museum, while entangling the art space in the cobweb of image society.”
