Showing the Power of Art, Honesty in the Face of Historical Trauma

The Taiwan Biennial has made every endeavor to categorize, debate, and define contemporary art in Taiwan within the confines of Taiwanese culture and ethnic identity over the course of social, cultural, historical, ethnic, and environmental changes on this island. The Wild Rhizome: 2018 Taiwan Biennial seeks not only to distinguish between Taiwan’s contemporary art and the identity-driven politics of exhibition, but also to liberate contemporary art in Taiwan (which is difficult to accurately define) from Taiwan’s history of colonization and immigration, Taiwanese nationalism, and the search for national origins, thus making it possible to reinvent this island by asking the question, What is Taiwan? The Wild Rhizome is also a response to art history, an attempt to carry out a paradigm shift, and a gaze at indigenous art practices and historical trauma in the 20th and 21st centuries outside the mainstream Han Chinese culture.