Polit-Sheer-Form

After the first couple of days in Taipei, I finally came to the realization that it was simply too hot to do a lot of outdoor activities. With this in mind, I planned two museums for my final day – the National Palace Museum and the Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art.

While no photography was allowed inside the National Palace Museum, I have to say it’s fantastic. As the Nationalists fled to Taiwan, they brought back as many priceless treasures as they could from the Forbidden City. They hold nearly 700,000 artifacts, although there’s only room for about 2{3a5a0fd47fd42b6497167aecc6170a94848f1ba936db07c4954344fcfff1d528} of them can be on display at any given time. They have free English tours at 11:00 AM and 3:00 PM – try to schedule your visit around these! I didn’t reserve a spot in advance, but there was plenty of space on the morning tour.taipei palace museum view-1

A side note: The two biggest treasures at the museum are the infamous Jadeite Cabbage and a stone that looks curiously like stewed pork. Both were incredibly lifelike and amazing to see, yet slightly amusing due to their food-like nature.

Following the National Palace Museum, I took a bus heading towards the Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art. Living art greeted me along the way.

taipei outside museum of contemporary art snails and rabbit racetaipei outside museum of contemporary art robots

Daily Pictures: Polit-Sheer-Form

The highlight of my museum visit was seeing an exhibition by the modernist artists Polit-Sheer-Form. This group, started in 2005, uses the idealized commune or collective way of life to capture the social changes happening in mainland China. One of their main goals is to ‘capture how the intimacy between people in a communist society is replaced by a sense of indifference by capitalism’.

One of their pieces was a library in which all off the shelves were filled with identical blue books. Depending on your optimism levels, the books were either all devoid of content or all full of the same content, blank space. Being in the room and looking through the books was almost spooky.

polit-sheer-form-library identical empty books

 

 

Last year using identical mops and buckets, they traveled to New York to see if they could clean up Time Square collectively.

polit-sheer-form buckets and mop

While I don’t think their art is very picturesque, it was quite introspective on the changes occurring in Chinese society. In the west we (rightly) focus on the tens of millions who died as a result of the Great Leap Forward. We focus on the pitfalls of communism. However, there is certainly more to the story.

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