The Queens Botanical Garden is pleased to cooperate with the Taipei Cultural Center in New York City to present the exhibition ?Going Green: New Environmental Art From Taiwan.? The show will open at Queens Botanical Garden, 43-50 Main St., Fushing, NY, on Friday, July 9, 6 ? 8 PM with a reception and gallery talk by the curator, Jane Ingram Allen, and the two visiting artists from Taiwan, Chungho Cheng and Chiaping Lu.
Cheng and Lu, an artist couple from Penghu, Taiwan, will be artists in residence for two weeks at Queens Botanical Garden from June 28 ? July 9 to create outdoor site-specific environmental art installations as part of this exhibition. Cheng will create a work titled ?Quaver? consisting of natural earth/clay forms suspended from trees in the Garden to function as bird houses. Lu will create an installation titled ?Wings? using branches to form several wing-like shapes suspended from trees in the garden. Lu will make handmade paper from mulberry tree bark found in the Garden to cover her ?wings.? The indoor part of this exhibition features works in all media by 14 other contemporary artists from Taiwan. The works focus on environmental issues such as global warming, pollution, waste disposal, loss of habitat, urban encroachment and other issues.
The artists and the artworks for this exhibition were selected by Jane Ingram Allen, an American independent curator, artist and critic living in Taiwan since coming there in January 2004 with a Fulbright Scholar award. She has curated exhibitions in Taiwan and other countries that focus on environmental issues and written feature articles and reviews for Sculpture, Public Art Review and other magazines. She initiated the Guandu International Outdoor Sculpture Festival in Taiwan in 2006 and was the curator of this environmental art exhibition for four consecutive years. She also curated an exhibition of international environmental art for Taiwan?s National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium in 2009, and in 2010 Jane curated an international environmental art exhibition for Cheng Long Wetlands in Yunlin County, Taiwan. Jane is also an artist herself who creates environmental installations.
The ?Going Green? exhibition is sponsored by the Taipei Cultural Center, New York City, and funded by the Council for Cultural Affairs, Taiwan. The exhibition will open in New York on July 9, 2010, at Queens Botanical Garden, Flushing, NY; and then go to the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, Philadelphia, PA, opening August 6; to Accident Gallery, Eureka, CA, opening Sept. 4, and then to the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Pembroke, NC, opening on Oct. 14. The exhibition will offer to the USA audiences an international perspective on environmental art and reflect the unique viewpoint and approach to nature of Taiwan?s contemporary artists who are just beginning to focus on the environment as an important issue for their country and the world. Taiwan is a very urban and highly developed technological country with many contemporary artists specializing in video art and new media. It is only recently that a few artists in Taiwan have begun to focus on the environment, and re-introduce to contemporary art the use of natural materials and a focus on the natural world that has always been of major importance in traditional Chinese art and culture. The Queens Botanical Garden presents this international exhibition as part of their art exhibition program featuring art about the natural world to raise awareness about environmental issues and contribute to greater understanding and cultural exchange about the common environmental problems faced by the world today.
For more information:
Jane Ingram Allen, Curator
Tel: 857-234-2432
E-mail: allenrebeccajanei@gmail.com
or
Philip Liu
1, E42nd Street, 7th Fl
New York, NY10017
Tel: 646-703-3188
E-mail: Philip@tpecc.org
or
Tim Heimerle, Director of Development and Marketing
Queens Botanical Garden
43-50 Main St., Flushing, NY 11355
Tel: 718-886-3800 X330
E-mail: theimerle@queensbotanical.org