Conference | Layers of History: The Art of Taiwan and Its Multiplicities

Image: Chang Dai-chien, Scenic View of Suhua Highway 蘇花攬勝 1956

Location

The conference will be held onsite at The Ohio State University in Dulles Hall, room 168 and live streamed via Zoom.

This event is open and free to the public. 

Organizers

Christina Wei-Szu Burke Mathison, Associate Professor of Teaching, The Ohio State University
Su-hsing Lin, Professor, Tainan National University of the Arts

Summary

In recent years in the United States, Taiwan has become better known in the context of its geo-political situation with China. But even this contemporary issue is steeped in a deep history of colonization and invasion. Beginning as early as the seventeenth century, Taiwan has been a land traded in treaties and colonized my multiple nations such as the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal. At the end of the nineteenth century, Japan began a fifty-year colonization of Taiwan that ended with the Nationalist Chinese army taking over the island in 1945. After a major massacre in 1947 with over 20,000 victims, and subsequent decades of martial law, Taiwan elected its first Taiwanese-born president in 1996. Since then, Taiwan began a process of acknowledging and processing these layers of colonization and invasions. 

Naturally, the art of Taiwan reflects what the contemporary artist Mali Wu has identified as Taiwan’s multiplicity, the layers and diversity of Taiwanese culture and history. This is seen in the work of indigenous artists, those active during the Japanese colonization, and in the works of contemporary artists of Taiwan today.

As contemporary artists continue to reflect on these earlier periods in their work, what does the art of twentieth century Taiwan look like in all its multiplicities? Gathering an outstanding group of scholars from the United States and Taiwan, this conference seeks to explore the multi-faceted nature of Taiwan’s historical record through various media. The conference will explore the complexities of how Taiwanese art is defined and the layers of history and colonialisms that have impacted art making in Taiwan over the past century. 

The conference is scheduled for February 28, 2025 from 9:30am-5:45pm, and will consist of five speakers and conclude with a roundtable discussion. February 28 was chosen for its historical context, a national holiday commemorating the over 20,000 victims of the 228-Massacre. This tragic event and the subsequent erasure and then eventual recognition of the incident reveals the complicated nature of exploring twentieth and twenty-first century Taiwanese art.