Artists

Photo Credit: NIU Chun-Chiang

WU Dar-Kuen

WU Dar-Kuen's Exhibition
WU Dar-Kuen's Exhibition Photo
WU Dar-Kuen's Art Work
WU Dar-Kuen's Group Photo of Performers
WU Dar-Kuen's Performance Photo

WU Dar-Kuen

Location Japan
Residency Tokyo Wonder Stie
Year of the Grant 2014
Work Mi-Lou Tokyo (series) Asian Anarchy Alliance
WU Dar-Kuen, born in 1974 in Taipei. He got his master's degree in Fine Arts from Taipei University of the Arts in 2002. After graduating from the university, he was invited to be the resident artist from several locations including NIFCA (Finland, 2002), Location One Artist Village by Yageo Tech-Art Award (New York, 2005), ISCP (New York, 2006), and Tokyo Wonder Site (Tokyo, 2008). Throughout the years, Dar-Kuen has applied his art practice in theatre, movies, arts teaching, arts criticism, and curating. His artworks have been shown in Taiwan, England, Finland, Sweden, Spain, Iceland, USA, Indonesia, China, Japan, Korea and Macau. He has been invited to participated in several major exhibitions include Osaka Triennial (Tokyo, 2001), Jakarta Biennial (Indonesia, 2005), and collaboration program in Taipei Biennial (Taipei, 2010).

Artist Statement:

I earned my Master of Fine Arts from the Taipei National University of the Arts. My works generally explore the influence of digital images on the human psychological condition, as well as on the transformation of our society in time and space. I am currently the Director of alternative spaces at “VT ARTSALON,” and I was the resident artist at the NIFCA in 2002, Location One Artist Village with Yageo Tech-Art Award in 2005, ISCP in 2006, and Tokyo Wonder Site in 2008. I am also involved in theater work, movies, arts teaching, arts criticism, organizing exhibitions, and so on. The recent interactive recording work of “Mi-Lou-Taipei” was displayed in the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and Gwangju Museum of Art in Korea, and is now a collection at the former institute.





My project was to invite the street performers to be part of my work in Tokyo. Thanks to TWS, I was able to collaborate with a number of talented individuals. Not only had I worked closely with these performers, but had also created one of my more important pieces of work.



While filming ‘Tokyo Rock Billy Club’ on one Sunday, the group of 40 performers dressed as Elvis Presley in Yoyogi Park became a huge live stage event. Over 200 passersby were circling around them watching the shoot, which I had never experienced before.



Through this program, I had built a connection with international curators and professionals which opened up many new opportunities for me to either exhibit my works or participate in international residency programs. The professionalism of the TWS staff also had influenced me in working with others.



It would be great to be able to invite even more international artists/curators to the program. At the same time, it is also important to build a networking platform among the residents in order to create a tighter bound with each other. I would also like TWS to invite former residents for sharing their accomplishments and plans for each year. By doing so, I believe TWS will quickly become the most influential member of the global art family.