Taiwan’s representation at the 60th Venice Biennale 2024: Everyday War to spotlight Yuan Goang-Ming’s video art musing on the state of existence.

by Art+ Magazine
Photos courtesy of Yuan Goang-Ming and Taipei Fine Arts Museum
January 3, 2023

This article first appeared on Art+ Magazine Issue 88. Get the latest issue available on collectibles by artplus, Shopee, and on select stores of National Bookstore and Fully Booked.

Taipei Fine Arts Museum, along with artist Yuan Goang-Ming and curator Abby Chen, have the pleasure to announce Everyday War, the new project representing Taiwan at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024. Combining Yuan’s signature video art, the artist will create a space with an “everyday” domestic feel, contemplating the present-day realities of life, as well as the hidden threats that underlie “the difficulty of dwelling poetically.”

Yuan Goang-Ming (1965–) grew up in Taiwan and studied media art in Germany. In the 1990s, he established himself as one of Taiwan’s leading new-media artists. His works include single- channel video, interactive installations, installation-based video projections, and digitally edited still photography. He pioneered a new form of motion picture somewhere in between video art and film, with a more theatrical presentation of daily life. Today, he continues to experiment with the possibilities of blending new-media art and cinematic storytelling.

The exhibition titled Everyday War and is expected to include five video artworks and a kinetic installation—four previously released and two new works. It will continue Yuan’s past audio- visual vocabulary, with such themes as “home,” “dwelling” and “an uncanny tomorrow,” which can be seen in Dwelling from 2014, as well as Tomorrowland and Everyday Maneuver from 2018. Employing a view of small things with an air of warning to magnify the unanticipated outbreak of crises, these artworks project anxieties about the current political and social environment—a state of eerie suspense due to escalating tension geopolitically surrounding the Pacific island chain, across the straits and conflicts everywhere.

Yuan Goang-Ming says, “This solo exhibition will try to metaphorically explore the hidden fears and threats of Taiwan in its current state of existence, and by asking questions about the future, it will re-examine the realities of the present, considering ‘war as part of normal life’ and ‘war becoming the new normal.’”

The observations and portrayals of the state of affairs in Taiwan in Yuan Goang-Ming’s art highlight that war today has evolved from the actual firing of artillery to invisible expressions, entailing post-capitalist unequal distribution, contagion, cyber attacks, and the discrimination and oppression of different religious and ethnic groups. War has become the “new normal” within the dwelling.

“This intertwining multitude of home, encompasses host and guest, private and public spheres, physical and virtual realms, the imagined and lived experiences,” notes curator Abby Chen. “It reflects an artist’s competing reality of living in Taiwan, where fear coexists with courage. In an era of great uncertainty and division, Yuan’s declaration of one’s own vulnerability is the very fortitude and truth that transforms into empathy and shared connectedness.”