With support from the Ministry of Culture and Cultural Division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Sydney, an online exhibition "Returning: Chapter 2" co-curated by Sydney Opera House and Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-LAB) will be available from Feb. 23 through Dec. 30.
"Returning: Chapter 1," which commissions Australian and Japanese perspectives, was released on Stream in 2021. "Returning: Chapter 2" builds upon this meditative digital contemporary art project, featuring works by Australian and Taiwanese artists responding to the events, experiences, and propositions prompted by the pandemic. The artists involved in this project are Australian dancers Amrita Hepi and Angela Goh, Taiwanese artists Su Yu-hsin (蘇郁心) and Tsai Char-wei (蔡佳葳), and Riverbed Theatre.
Critical, engaged and historically grounded, Chapter 2 platforms contemporary artists with particular interests exploring autobiography, mythology and culture to address a world that seems perpetually in crisis: from the day-to-day, to the shifts in politics, and existential in between. Energized with cultural opposition, reclamation, and risk-taking, their responses are entwined with the politics of this time.
Micheal Do, curator of contemporary art at the Sydney Opera House, says the artists use sound, body, architecture, the Opera House and the virtual as inspiration for their works, creating a broad-ranging collection of works that read as scenes, scores, and states of existence — innocence, happiness, the sublime, despair, rage, confusion, and imagination. These artists have set their ambition to challenge us to be genuinely critical and thoughtful — asking us, as thinkers, as feelers and as witnesses to the past two years, to interrogate and engage more thoughtfully with the world around us.