~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 【Movement – Migration and the In-Between: A Butoh Study in Wistaria’s Historical Space】
April 17, 2022
Performance: 15:00 pm – 15:45 pm
Post - show Q & A: 16:00 pm – 16:30 pm Host: Amie Chou
Performers: Yuta Oki 大木雄太, Margarita Tseng 曾苑寧,Chloe Yu Nong Lin 林雨濃,Chi Chen Lee 紀辰
Currently on display, Tseng Ting-Yu’s solo exhibit of arresting ink paintings convey in a humorous and subtle form, the artist’s observations and experiences of spending his time back and forth between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. His choice of subjects and painting style convey an overall sense of familiarity within strangeness, personal connection despite alienation.
In recent months, Wistaria Tea House has been home to “Butoh Playscape”, a weekly group practice, every Wednesday evening. For this performance, Butoh Playscape has invited two butoh performers who, like the exhibit artist, also have experience living in familiar yet unfamiliar lands. Please come join us for a lively afternoon of butoh and music improvisation while sipping on gongfu tea and nibbling on snacks. Between movement and stillness, dance and non-dance, come experience the performers’ physical and melodic inquiry into Tseng Ting-Yu’s latest works.
Entrance fee: 400NT, includes gaiwan tea and snacks. We recommend entering by 14:30 pm to order tea. Seating is limited to 30 Online reservation: https://www.beclass.com/rid=26489f7624e6b4a24f53 Phone reservation: 02-2363-7375 For English inquiries please email amiewistaria@gmail.com
Yuta Oki A butoh artist from Kyoto, Yuta has been studying with Japanese Butoh artist Seiji Tanaka since 2015. In April of 2019, Yuta held a solo performance karada no fūkei (Bodyscape) in Kyoto. He continues to perform, host workshops, and participate in a variety of artistic pursuits in and around Taiwan.
Margarita Tseng A butoh performer, Margarita has performed in Australia, Germany, Hungary, Czech Republic, India, Malaysia, and Taiwan, etc. A world nomad who lives by the motto that life has no boundaries, she uses her body to explore boundless space, time, life, and dreams.
Chloe Yu Nong Lin A Taiwanese pipa player and experimental composer. A graduate from the Art Institute of Chicago with a Master of Arts in Sound, her creations focus on individual pipa improvisation and experimental composition, while live performances are devoted to the body’s fusion with musical instruments and exploring fresh manifestations of pipa sound through improvisation. On March 1, 2021, the American experimental label Monastral released her first digital solo pipa electro-acoustic album Pi Sound. https://soundcloud.com/chloe-lin-15 https://www.instagram.com/chloeyunonglin_pipa/
Chi Chen Lee
Many things started with butoh Once a butoh dancer, then musical accompaniment to butoh, Now somewhere in between I think of entering butoh through sound “non-dance” appeared to me in a dream
Sometimes, silence is indeed golden, an adage aptly demonstrated by the impressive mime troupe, Shang Orientheatre. Founded by the Taiwanese artist Li-Tsuei Sun, the group combines expressive choreography and multicultural aesthetics into their stunning storytelling.
Before I Soar: Shang Orientheatre Retrospective explores the group's impressive two-decade journey around the world through through various media, including masks, posters, photographs, and installations.
This spring, Wistaria welcomes you to contemplate, with and through Shang Orientheatre, the renowned dramatic adage of yore, "All the world's a stage."
The closing act of Wistaria's 40th-anniversary celebration series, The Flowers Have Yet to Fall, From Uneven Ground I Soar features Li-Tsuei Sun and Rhydian Vaughan in a dynamic mother-son duo performance. A homage to both dance and tea, Li-Tsuei's performance will be accompanied by music by the family ensemble of Rhydian (son, guitar) and Grant Vaughan (husband, percussion).
Shang Orientheatre embodies Sun's artistic vision of integrating classical Chinese culture into the art of the mime. Her choreography and storytelling bear the imprint of Ya-Yueh, Chi Gong, folk mythology, and the traditions of Western European performing art.
This spring, enjoy a memorable Mother's Day celebrating tea and art with the Vaughan/Sun family at Wistaria.
活動信息 Event Details
活動日期 Date:5月8日(日),難忘的母親節 An unforgettable Mother's Day
For Wistaria’s first solo exhibition of 2022, Movement-Migration and the In-Between, we are honored to invite Tseng Ting-yu, the 2021 the Honourable Mention recipient of Hong Kong’s prestigious Liu Kuo-sung Ink Art Award, to display nine of his award-winning works, as well as some of his new pieces, for the first time in Taiwan.
Since 2008, Tseng has contemplated, through both philosophy and art, the intricate relationship between the self, ink painting, and place. In 2018, upon the completion of his art degree from the National Taiwan Normal University, Tseng began teaching at the Shandong Institute of Technology, where his status as an “other” inspired him to observe and rethink the interplay of the individual, art, and geography. This process proved to be central in the artist’s thinking of “Taiwanese ink painting,” whose creative and innovative potential must be derived from the balance between history and futurity.
In recent years, Tseng’s constant movement to and from home and abroad recalls the migration of the previous generation of Taiwanese artists, such as the notable “Three Masters who Crossed the Sea”: Zhang Daqian, Huang Junbi, and Pu Ru.
Tseng’s artistic approach utilizes the interplay of concept, water, and ink with a unique characteristic of Chinese painting, the multi-point perspective, to examine the fluctuations of the self and the other. The shifting viewpoints that arise from this approach are critical to the artist’s imagining of the complex nexus of the self, place, and time. In a sense, Tseng’s work shares the same philosophical and visual concerns of early Cubist painters such as Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp: a heartfelt attempt to visually represent movement through time, while reflecting on the canvas the simultaneous shifts in the viewer’s perspective (an instructive example would be Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase). In this context, Tseng’s oeuvres convey, albeit through a different visual vocabulary, the notions of simultaneity and ongoingness, as well as the themes of movement, exploration and fixity.
Tseng’s ink painting explores the fluidity of home and land (home/land), self and identity (self-identity). Poetically, this fluidity is evoked by the artist’s decision to locate the vanishing points in water: fluidity in water. For Tseng, water symbolizes the state of in-betweenness, of ongoingness, like a telescope-wielding explorer moving from frontier to frontier. Furthermore, for Tseng water also characterizes the inherent contradiction of art: that art is a product of marginal utility. This concept can be inferred from the phrase “one straits, two shores,” an expression used to describe one’s pursuit of wealth within the economic, political, and cultural context of cross-straits relations. Ultimately, “one straits, two shores” signifies the surrealness of the clash between dreams and reality: the waves propel the explorer forward, but can also drown him/her.
Tseng’s digital and installation art utilizes ink as the principal medium. This practice was first conceived in 2015, when the artist was invited by the General Assocation of Chinese Culture to submit a piece for the “2015 Culture Art Festival for Chinese Characters.” Xiangqi (Chinese Chess), was thus created as a work that executed the concept “ink away from ink painting,” as an installation that played on the board game’s calligraphic and public characteristics. A classic Chinese game of intellect that is often played in public spaces – parks, for instance – it differs many other traditional board games in its use of the written word to represent playing pieces. Poignantly, Tseng decides to cast the two sets of pieces in different scripts, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, to capture the current state of cross-straits relations: even though both sides share the same ancestral Sinic culture, they, like the chess pieces, are divided by a body of water demarcating differences in political systems.
In Xiangqi, each component corresponds to an item in Chinese calligraphy: the board to the ink-stone, the pieces to the inksticks, and the river to the inkwell. As the audience plays against one another on this set, the movement of the pieces will leave marks on the board, mimicking the friction of inksticks on ink-stone. Previous exhibitions of this installation pitted Chinese and Taiwanese visitors against one another, encounters which the artist has recorded and which are now on display in Movement-Migration and the In-Between.
Similarly, Revival: Play with Ink is inspired by moxi, an idea popularized by the renowned Song Chinese literati Su Shi. Literally meaning “play with ink,” moxi is the liberation of art from formal and formulaic practices through play and playfulness. Tseng’s Revival: Play with Ink, then, plays on the relationship between ink, paper, and ink-stone to illuminate the realities and absurdities of life.
“A guest who stays for a long time will eventually see the clouds for snow,” strikes Tseng as a fitting expression for this moment in history. Attributed to Liu Yantao, a Chinese artist hailing from the generation “who crossed the straits” to Taiwan, the phrase underscores the manner in which the self, culture, and geography interact: slowly, vestiges of the past, of home, begin to manifest in one’s view of the present. For Tseng, who moved across the straits to Shandong, he is a “guest” who sees “the snow for clouds.” Home is in the eye of the beholder.
In this context, in-betweenness is Tseng Ting-yu’s response to the increasingly globalized and mobile character of the world. Movement-Migration and the In-Between highlights encourages a playful exploration of the fluidities of self, place, and time. Where are we born? What lies on the other shore? Discover for yourself at Wistaria Tea House this spring.
隨著涼意一日一日走入初冬,手捧一杯溫熱的白茶,隨著甘甜溫潤的茶香滋味,欣賞白茶的變奏曲。以不同地區的茶葉原料,使用一樣的白茶製作工藝,在茶葉品種特色各異交織作用下,形成不同風味的變奏曲。 As we enter early winter, allow the variations in white tea to accompany you through the fluctuating weather. With a warm cup of tea in your palm, enjoy the sweet fragrances and elegant flavors that vary from tea to tea.
As we enter early winter, allow the variations in white tea to accompany you through the fluctuating weather. With a warm cup of tea in your palm, enjoy the sweet fragrances and elegant flavors that vary from tea to tea.
White tea is essentially the least processed of tea: plucked, withered, then left to dry fully in the sunlight or through other means. Differing tea leaf cultivars, regions, and tea makers result in several white teas with unique flavors varied enough to tempt any white tea aficionado.
We will start with the classics, two white teas from Fuding, Fujian including “Wistaria”, the custom tea cake made for Wistaria Paris’ grand opening.
Then we will taste three different kinds of white teas from Taiwan ranging in age, region, and cultivars, resulting in distinctly different flavors.
Finally we will taste a white tea made from ancient trees in Lincang, Yunnan: Lu Mu Dan, also known as “Green Peony”.
In addition, every tea tasting includes an “easter egg”: a delightful surprise that you will find out at the tasting.
Event Includes: Gongfu tea demonstration Tea tasting using Taiwanese Exquisite tea snack pairing Open Q&A and discussion A white tea sample gift for you to take home
Event Dates:
11/18 (Thursday) 2-4 pm Mandarin
11/20 (Saturday) 2-4 pm Mandarin
12/4 (Saturday) 2-4 pm English
Number of attendees: 3 minimum
Event fee: 1000 NT or the use of one quintuple stimulus voucher equivalent to 1000 NT.
Attention
An email notification will be sent 3 days prior to the event to confirm the class, please show us this email upon arrival.
In order to provide you with a quality experience, the tea tasting will be held with a minimum of 3 attendees and a maximum of 8 attendees.
The organizer reserves the right to change the time of event in case of emergency or natural disaster.
Please follow protocols for epidemic prevention as prescribed by the Central Epidemic Command Center.
Masks and hand sanitation are required. Those who fail to comply may not participate in the event.
For any inquiries about the English tea tasting, please email amiewistaria@gmail.com
After a four-year hiatus, renowned ink painter Wu Shih-Wei marks his long-awaited return to the arts scene with an exhibition of his forty-one new works at Wistaria Tea House, continuing a longstanding friendship between the artist and Wistaria.
Sight Beyond Sight: Ink Paintings by Wu Shih-Wei will display a variety of works related to the ink painting genre, including immense four-piece screens, scroll paintings, fans, two-sided paintings, and miniature paintings, whose creative juxtaposition of paint and frame will doubtlessly delight the sight.
Wu’s meticulous strokes, masterful use of ink, and elegant colour palette express an astonishing harmony of content and form, of an enchanting and detailed world of natural beauty. An ethos of elegance and vivacity permeate Wu’s art, a sentiment reinforced by the artist’s fluid and lively strokes. They also encapsulate the philosophy of harmony among myriad beings across myriad temporalities – universal harmony.
At over sixty years of age, Wu considers this exhibition to be a turning point in his ink painting journey: it marks a return to a more naturalistic aesthetics, to a purer pursuit of nature and simplicity. It is also a celebration of the artist’s extensive friendship with Wistaria, with whom he feels an artistic and cultural affinity. The decision to hold this exhibition at Wistaria, then, feels quite natural.
Come, and enjoy Sight Beyond Sight at Wistaria, among the harmonious poetry of Wu’s elegant flora.
Mountains at dawn, tranquil in their deep green hues At sunrise, they turn emerald green After sunset, the mountains are black Foggy mornings, the mountains wear delicate green veils After snowfall, the mountains are calm and white, markedly different
Only those who truly love mountains can feel their pulse, and the plenitude they contain… Sense the mountains' myriad emotions and qualities, appreciate their diverse hues and appearances
Humans gather resources from mountains, as well as spiritual consolation – mountains are our mothers and our homes
The mountains' kaleidoscopic manifestations enrich the artist’s imagination of home They remind us to cherish our mothers – our mountains. Lee Ming-Sheng Trans.: Lo-Ching Chow