City-Taipei

"City-Taipei" is a series in the body of work "City" that I've been producing for the past ten years. "City" investigates things that are happening in a particular city. I am greatly influenced by whatever city I am living in-its energy, its joys, its sorrows, its oxymorons. Taking in all that a city is inspires and feeds my work.

Taipei is a city that has experienced rapid change for it has gone from a small Asian city to a large international urban center in the past 15 years. In addition to rapidly urbanizing, it has also westernized and become more international, due to its increasing wealth and the number of foreigners moving to the country.  It must be remembered that Taipei was under martial law until 1987 and so was sheltered from much of the outside world before then. Also, due to tense relations it’s had with China and trying to maintain its independence, Taiwan has had a complicated situation as far as stabilizing its identity. It is part of an international world where only a few countries recognize it as an independent country, other nations not recognizing its sovereignty in fear of angering China and jeopardizing their own relations with the Mainland. This work investigates a culture that is trying to maintain its own cultural identity and traditions in the face of rapid urbanization and westernization as well as preserving what it means to be Chinese but not from Mainland China. Keep in mind that this is all from the perspective of an expatriate living in Taiwan, and so it is hoped that perhaps this cultural distance of being a foreigner can lend some objectivity and a different viewpoint to the situation than that of a local artist.

This work was created from 2005-2008.