Yun-Pei Hsiung (b. 1985, grew up in Taipei, Taiwan) works in the realm between design and art. His practice revolves around social interventions with a design approach, a method of eliciting social action through objects in public space. His works include objects, tools and drawings used in public spaces to initiate debates on social and political issues. His most recent projects touch on social and political issues that he deconstructs and rebuilds as social sculptures. For Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Hsiung has planned a participatory exhibition that will unfold over the course of four weeks thanks to the visitors’ creative participation. It will address the political tensions between the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan: Beijing regards Taiwan and its 23 million inhabitants as an integral part of its national territory and aims to annex the democratically governed island – if necessary, by military means. The conflict gained new momentum when Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, visited the island in August this year. China sees visits of foreign politicians as a provocation and retaliated by conducting military exercises in the Taiwan Strait.

Through the active participation of the visitors – who are asked to build their own rockets with personal notes and drawings on the political situation in Taiwan and on German-Chinese relations – the artist not only highlights the complicated connections between global economics and military conflicts, but also the individual’s contribution to international power imbalances. His work furthermore considers the concept of political queerness. According to the artist, Taiwan is a ‘place that was cut off from the rest, cast out and neglected, and therefore forced to develop its own identity, much like Berlin, during and after its partition, was forced to become today’s Berlin’.

Yun-Pei Hsiung is a grantee of the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan (R.O.C.) and the Taipei Representative Office in the Federal Republic of Germany.