Detail: Hsieh Ying-chun, Chen Chieh-jen, Chang Chien-chi and Yu Cheng-ta have been chosen to represent Taiwan at the 53rd Venice Biennale scheduled to take place from 7 June to 22 November 2009. The exhibition entitled 'Foreign Affairs' explores the current state of the individual in the imbalanced unsymmetrical circumstances of globalization, presenting personal, informal projects and practical applications of "actual foreign affairs".
'Foreign Affairs' presents the process and technique of constant construction and affirmation of identity, deploying a shifting relationship between others and oneself. The construction of the subject is a constant flux of exchanging and addressing with others. Whether with individuals, groups, communities, or nations, the establishment of a relationship must depend on communication and interaction. Particularly Taiwanese people have been locked in a difficult political conundrum in terms of foreign affairs, and have developed their own means of reaction and response, both individually and collectively.
The selection of works explores the practical state of cross-regional art in the context of the operative logic of contemporary global politics, economics and society; alternative possibilities for communicative interaction; and also the question of Taiwan's status and identity. The participating artists, according to their own identities, enter into other regions, with their unique personal modes of practical application – to observe, document, and intervene - in order to interact and collide, with that area of the world, concretely putting a system of foreign affairs into action.