Art as venue for issues

CEBU, Philippines — There was a time when the value of art was purely “for art’s sake.” Art was praised mainly for its “wow” factor, the power to arrest attention and amaze audiences. It appealed to the high-nosed society.

Things have changed since. New art forms have emerged. And art has taken on more “real” purposes.

One example would be how art has become a venue for issues – social, political, environmental, whatever. This is seen in the ongoing Taipei Biennial art festival, where advocates of environmental protection express their cause instead of taking it to the streets. In a way, the streets are being brought into the museum this year.

Lisa Movius, at www.theartnewspaper.com, reports that “along with six non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the co-curators Mali Wu and Francesco Manacorda have invited Taiwanese indigenous land right protesters to occupy a hall and courtyard of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum for the duration of the exhibition titled “Post-Nature: a Museum as Ecosystem,” until  March 10.”

The project, according to Movius, was adapted for the museum by three activists including filmmaker Mayaw Biho, and they have hosted regular forums, talks and workshops with painting on stones. “They use stones because these are a symbol of the land, and also the material they use to build their houses, so has a magical meaning for them,” Movius quotes Wu, a Taiwanese artist and curator known for her environmental activism. “Over the past two years, the indigenous class has been fighting to keep its traditional territory – in vain. ‘Post-Nature’ is about how people live in a certain environment, so when you lose your land, or your traditional territory, it means not just that you lose your land but you also lose the tradition, all the culture, even the language, of what you experience in your daily life.”

Indeed, the environment is a serious issue these days. And it’s a good thing that the matter has found good space in a major art event, like the Taipei Biennial. Now the spotlight is trained on the tension between ecology and economy.

Many related issues are also likely to come to the surface. “A lot of those related issues the [artists] are discussing, like energy arrangement, air pollution, garbage dumping,” Wu is quoted a week after the biennial’s opening. “This is the time for us to change the model of our economy.”

There has been found a connection between intensifying typhoons and pollution. Taiwan, known for industrial production, consumes a lot of water, energy, and other resources. It also faces the issues of air pollution and industrial dumping.

Filipina artist Martha Atienza is entering her video “Our Islands” in the Taipei Biennial. It shows an underwater procession of priests, police, drug dealers, and cross-dressers, all impacted by ocean damage around the Philippine archipelago. It is an interesting social commentary on the present environmental state of the country.

Beijing-born, Hong Kong-based Zheng Bo is also entering his “Pteridophilia” videos, with an under-18 warning label. Zheng is the only Mainland Chinese artist in the exhibition. The videos show a naked man passionately copulating with plants – something that could not be screened back in China. But the Taipei Biennial allows for such a ‘statement’ to have a venue. PHOTOS: www.theartnewspaper.com