Strong criticism for controversial work, Taipei Fine Arts Museum director resigns

The director of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, curator Ping Lin, one of Taiwan’s leading museums, has announced her resignation for the month of January.The announcement follows a rather convulsive period for the island museum, since it recently hosted a highly controversial work, although officially the resignation is not related to the exhibition, but rather to the fact that the director is nearing retirement age.

The work in question is titled I-DEN-TI-TY and is a work by Taiwanese artist Mei Dean-E (Taipei, 1954), who, moreover, was already featured in a monographic exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in 2017. The work is an installation consisting of fifteen golden plaques, covered with veils in which words such as “shame” and “disgrace” appear, and representing the countries with which Taiwan has broken diplomatic relations. This is not a new work, as it dates back to 1994, but it was revisited this year for a traveling exhibition that touched several continents.

Art Asia Pacific magazine reports that the Taipei city administration strongly criticized the work: in a Facebook post, later deleted, city councilor Yu Shu-hui called the work “an incitement to xenophobia, or a simple outburst of resentment.” Following the criticism, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je also commented on the matter, letting it be known that, should any of the nations targeted by the work have something to complain about, “we should give Lin Ping a demerit.”

The artist responded in a Facebook post of his own, “Even if they canceled the exhibition of my work, diplomatic relations would not be restored. And if they cancel the exhibition in the name of the public institution hosting it [the museum, ed.], it will be an abuse of power, an interference with artistic activities, and this is the worst harm that can be done to public art.”

At the moment, the Taipei Department of Culture, on which the Taipei Fine Arts Museum depends, has launched the announcement to search for a new director, while Ping Lin will return to teach at Tunghai University, Taiwan’s second oldest, where he taught for seventeen years and where from 2007 to 2010 he served as Dean of the Department of Arts and Director of the Center for the Arts. Ping Lin headed the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in 2015, and her career also includes two appearances in Italy: she was curator of the Taiwan Pavilion at the 2017 and 2019 Venice Biennales.

In the photograph, the work I-DEN-TI-TY by Mei Dean-E.

Strong criticism for controversial work, Taipei Fine Arts Museum director resigns

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