This summer, the New Taipei City Museum of Fine Arts (NTCAM) will be hosting a unique PE class at the museum.
Held at NTCAM, adjacent to Yingge Civic Sports Centre, “In Terms of Sport” is an exhibition that integrates indoor (playground, stadium) and outdoor (city, street) sports. This thematic exhibition aims to deconstruct and challenge mainstream perceptions of “sport” in modern society.
This physical education lesson at the museum unfolds through art, architecture and sport. From the perspective of Tomiyasu Hayahisa, an artwork about a table tennis table where no actual table tennis is played; a community sports centre designed by Lina Bo Bardi that cannot host formal sporting matches but only for leisure activities; and Zhang Xingxian, a professional athlete who represented Japan, Manchuria and Taiwan in international sporting competitions and the epitome of “sport is life”. Combining these three examples from different eras, geographical contexts, ethnicities and social structures encapsulates the mundane nature of sport; it is never just a sport.
In this exhibition, eight artists from Taiwan, Japan, Germany, Brazil, India, the United States and South Africa present unconventional sports scenes through photography, video, kinetic, spatial and sound installations and the distinctive spaces of NTCAM’s “creative clusters.” Here, one can encounter street dance on the outskirts of Recife (Barbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca), urban skating amongst activist songs (Amol K. Patil), the impeccable invisible national team (Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi), body parts rolling freely (Luo Juniasin), climbing sites covered in white sand (Yang Chih-chuan) and the dynamic soundscapes of the mountains and forests of eastern Taiwan (Sa-Yun Chan).
At the same time, various sports equipment will be on display, including the net of Taiwan’s world-class tukball team, paddles that inherit Austronesian maritime culture, and the Olympic trophy won by Taiwan’s first female baseball umpire outside of competition. Through these exhibits, familiar and unknown sports stories related to Taiwan will be revealed one after another.
What do we talk about when we talk about sports? What do we really observe when we watch sports? The narratives in these exhibits weave together identity, colonial history, political dynamics and social issues, offering alternative routines for sports at the museum and a different kind of physical education class.
For more information, please visit our website.
Exhibition period: July 5th to November 17th, 2024
Exhibition Venue: New Taipei City Museum of Art Creative Cluster
Curator: Tsou Ting
Artists: Amol K. Patil, Barbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca, Gabriella Angotti Jones, Sakihisa Tomiyasu, Luo Juniasin, Sayun Chan, Senjiwe Niki Nkosi, Yang Chih-chuan