Curating the ‘South’: Reflections on recent exhibitions at state-run museums in Taiwan

South as Turn, The Secret South ─ these are titles of recent events at art museums in Taiwan, as the art scene shifts towards investigations into indigenous histories, critiques of neoliberalism, and attempts to form alliances with the South in visual art. Behind this Southbound approach is an attempt to connect with global postcolonial discourses, born out of the frustration of defining the local. Postcolonial authenticity plays a huge role in endorsing the landscape of the plural forms of modernism in post-1989 institutional agendas, particularly at major neoliberal museums such as the Tate, MoMA, and most Biennales. The difficulties in defining the postcolonial condition form a major obstacle in translating contemporary Taiwanese art to the international art scene, as diverse colonial powers come into play: various Western powers, Japanese colonialism, and China-centrism. This talk will question the symptom and desire to construct postcolonial authenticity and alterity by analysing the ideologies and approaches of recent curatorial projects that seek to reconfigure art history ─ beginning with the Taiwan Biennale in 2017 and the Asian Biennale in 2019. By looking at the ideologies behind research-based creative and curatorial practices, I dissect the postcolonial struggles in art of the post-martial law period to argue that Han-centrism, new nationalism, and the Cold War have limited Taiwanese understandings of diversity