Sun Xun in Artist Making Movement: 2015 Asian Art Biennial
National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan
September 19 - December 6, 2015
The theme of this year’s Asian Art Biennial is Artist Making Movement. It reflects on the restlessness and instability observed in today’s Asian society, with these anxious movements coming from people’s feelings of discontent with life, dissipation of the so-called small happiness, a sense of comfort zone, and also security mechanism failures. The existing institutions can no longer stand up to the challenges in reality, causing different phenomena that reveal the current state of Asian contemporary culture, which is in the midst of reforming its system of governance for the everyday life, with new order and relationships pursued and attempts exerted at subverting social power allocation. Facing these extreme changes in Asia, using art to examine today’s system of survival and taking part in the construction of the present history of life in Asia are important discourses explored by artists. As the theme Artist Making Movement suggests, the ability to make (create) and to move symbolizes Asian contemporary art is straying from how it was perceived in the past, as a static noun, and it is transitioning into a verb of assertive actions. This progression denotes Asian contemporary culture’s active function and the stance taken for the actualization of art, with actions exerted for creating a new chapter in Asian history and to break away from stagnant forms and systems. Through their active interventions in reality and also their awareness for life, artists have become more assertive with using art to instigate changes, with the belief that personal creative endeavors can become movements with social effects. Artist Making Movement intends to project these active efforts that are shaping Asia’s future. For more information, please visit asianartbiennial.org.