Synchronic Constellation: Cross-Boundary Perspectives in Art

The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo is pleased to present “Synchronic Constellation: Cross-Boundary Perspectives in Art,” an exhibition that reconsiders the cultural and artistic modernity of Taiwan and Japan. The show draws inspiration from a film on the Le Moulin Poetry Society, a collective of modernist writers founded in Taiwan in the 1930s. Featuring approximately 200 modern Taiwanese artworks, 500 related archival materials, and 100 contemporaneous Japanese pieces, the exhibition maps a constellation of intercultural exchange, inviting viewers to rethink modernity through from today’s vantage point.

The film Le Moulin (2015, released in Japan in 2017) traces the efforts of a group of poets who introduced Surrealism to Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period and composed their own verses in Japanese, weaving together a diverse body of work from across multiple regions, generations, and genres. The film offers no fixed narrative, leaving room for each viewer to form their own interpretation. Its director, Huang Ya-li, serves as guest curator for the present exhibition. The six chapters of the show translate Le Moulin’s reflections, along with its editing techniques, into the space of the museum, bringing together artworks, literature, cinema, music, theater, and dance in a montage-like constellation. The galleries itself thus functions as a device that generates intersections of multiple relationships, implicating the viewers themselves, through its incorporation of footage directed by Huang Ya-li, reflective surfaces, and a seemingly labyrinthine floor plan. 

The individual endeavors in modern Taiwan and Japan each possessed a radiance of their own. While not geographically adjacent, they belonged to the same era, linked together like stars in multiple constellations. The present exhibition seeks to distance itself from existing narratives and linear conceptions of history, fostering instead complex and diverse connections, not only among the works themselves, but also with our own bodies and perspectives. Encountered in that space, these artworks and documents emerge not as mere fragments of the past but as experiences of the present—an invitation to reexamine our own point of view.

HUANG Ya-li

Huang Ya-li is a curator and filmmaker. He has long been dedicated to the interdisciplinary exploration and practice of arts and literature. At the core of his work is the excavation and reconstruction of forgotten cultural nodes within Asian modern and contemporary history. His film Le Moulin (2015) won Best Documentary at the Golden Horse Awards and received multiple honors at the Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF). He curated the exhibition Synchronic Constellation: Le Moulin Poetry Society and Its Time — A Cross-Boundary Exhibition at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in 2019, and the accompanying publication received numerous accolades.

Exhibited Works and Featured Artists

This exhibition consists of approximately 200 paintings, sculptures, prints, and photographs. This is supplemented with around 500 archival materials sourced from over 15 Taiwanese institutions including the Tainan Art Museum, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, and National Taiwan Library, as well as private collections.
The featured artists are essential to understanding modern Taiwanese art such as HUANG Tu-shui (1895–1930), CHEN Cheng-po (1895–1947), LI Mei-shu (1902–1983), HO Te-lai (1904–1986), LIN Yu-shan (1907–2004), KUO Hsueh-hu (1908–2012), HONG Rui-lin (1912–1996), HUANG Tsao-tsao (1915–1999), CHEN Hsiayu (1917–2000), and CHUANG Shih-ho (1923–2020).

Exhibition Flyer (PDF)

Flyer designed by Idealform Co. (front side) and Akiyama Shin / edition.nord (back side)