It was an unusual kind of exhibition: work by four contemporary Taiwanese artists, created in the traditional medium of ink and paper-unlike most of today's trendy installation art-on display at the prestigious Drawing Center in New York's SoHo district and given a quarter-page of coverage in the New York Times. But missing was Alice Yang, the show's Chinese-American curator, and instead it was the artists themselves, along with Alice's husband and mother, who spoke on her behalf and recalled her short but brilliant life in art.

During the past few years, a wave of Chinese art has arrived on the US art scene, beginning in New York with a series of exhibitions spanning ancient times to the present day: "Splendors of Imperial China" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, "China: 5000 Years" at the Guggenheim Museum, and "Inside Out: New Chinese Art" at the Asia Society. It must be the first time that Chinese art has ever enjoyed such a high profile in America. During this same period, work by a group of contemporary Taiwanese artists went on display at New York's Drawing Center, in "Tracing Taiwan: Contemporary Works on Paper," organized by the Taiwan-born curator and art historian Alice Yang.

Absent award-winner

It was an unusual opening to an exhibition, in that it was the curator's family who thanked guests for their compliments about the show. As the flashbulbs popped, Alice's mother, Suhwa Chou Yang, though poised and elegant, couldn't help crying: "This should be Alice getting photographed, not me!"

In early 1997, after two years of preparation, 35-year-old Alice Yang finally settled on the fourth artist for inclusion in her "Tracing Taiwan" exhibition, and dashed back to New York to take up her post as curator of exhibitions and collections at the Parrish Art Museum in Long Island. It was on the first day of the Chinese New Year, within a week of starting her new job, that Alice was knocked down and killed by a truck while celebrating in Chinatown with her husband. The arts community in Taiwan was deeply saddened by the news.

Born in Taiwan in 1961, Alice Yang emigrated to the US when she was 15. After graduating from Yale, where she majored in Chinese art history, Yang did stints as an intern at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, both in New York, before joining the New Museum of Contemporary Art-the standard-bearer for avant-garde art in the city-where she became assistant curator. As the most senior ethnic Chinese arts administrator in the US, Yang arranged a number of exhibitions featuring Asian and Chinese artists working in the US, but her life was to be cut short just as her career was taking off and as she neared completion of her PhD in modern art history.

Breaking down East-West barriers

It was Alice Yang's mother who most influenced the course of her career. During the 1970s Mrs. Chou Yang ran the well-known Hunglin Art Gallery in Taipei. The climate for modern art in Taiwan was highly conservative in those days, she recalls, noting with a smile: "When Kuo Chen-chang, who was a student at the time, had a show at my gallery, his college gave him a demerit!" Young Alice was thus familiar with Taiwanese artists such as Chuang Che, Wu Hao, Chu Wei-pai, Chen Ting-shih, Hsi Te-chin and Lin Hsing-yu, and she once traveled with her mother to Nankunshen to visit the legendary folk artist Hung Tung.

When she emigrated to the US, Alice took her love for and attachment to the art of her birthplace with her. Blue and white porcelains and a Chinese-style table and chairs were features of her tastefully laid-out home in New York, where works by Taiwanese artists adorned the walls and Taiwanese music played softly in the background. Mrs. Chou Yang never actively tried to inculcate an interest in art studies in her daughter, yet this was the direction that Alice nevertheless took of her own accord.

While at Yale, Yang went to mainland China to improve her Chinese, spending six months at Jinan University in Guangzhou before traveling around the country on her own. This was back in 1982 when China was still largely closed off. She then went to study Japanese in Japan, on account of the advanced level of Chinese art history research in that country, but it was the vibrant modern art scene that most attracted her once she was there, and this began her involvement with contemporary art.

The international art world has increasingly turned its gaze towards Asia in recent years, and art from Taiwan has begun to figure in international exhibitions. A frequent problem, however, is that there is inadequate knowledge of Eastern cultures on the part of exhibition curators in the West, while those from countries in the East tend to follow the artistic values and preferences of the West, and seem unable to draw on the spirit of oriental art for their shows-not to mention the constraints that they face in terms of language and personal connections.

Alice Yang, however, was born in Taiwan and educated in the US. From an early age she was accustomed to meeting artists with her mother, and traveling the world with her father-to Italy, Spain, France and Greece in the West, and India and Thailand in the East. She had personal experience of both sets of cultures, and a global breadth of vision. Her academic background in Chinese art history and modern art further helped develop her keen sense and unique perspective.

In an interview before her death, Yang spoke of various obstacles facing Chinese artists in America, one being the lack of connections, another being the language barrier, and a third being the difficulty for people in the West of grasping the spirit of Eastern art. Bridging the cultures of East and West as she did, and possessing both the language ability and a background in art history, Alice Yang was well-placed to pioneer a new approach.

Contemplations in paper and ink

The exhibition "Tracing Taiwan: Contemporary Works on Paper" organized by Yang on behalf of a group of artists from Taiwan, demonstrates her meticulousness and originality in many ways, from the timing of the show and the choice of medium, to the thematic conception of the show itself.

At the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, the final stop for the exhibition after touring the US, the first sight that greets visitors is a suite of free-hanging floor-to-ceiling scrolls by Huang Chih-yang, entitled "Maternity Room." In these pictures, the artist employs explosive brushwork and dense dark swirls of ink to create a series of gigantic figures, half-human and half-beast, which are evocative of Daoist talismans. Immediately opposite can be seen Hsu Yu-jen's depictions of Taiwan's polluted and wrecked landscape, rendered with short, dry stabs of the brush. A third artist, Yu Peng, who has long resided close to the National Palace Museum in Taipei and draws on landscape painting of the Ming and Qing dynasties for inspiration, fills long scrolls with contorted, naked figures inhabiting a miniature universe of their own. Hou Chun-ming, the fourth exhibitor, uses the form of traditional woodcuts, as if taken from the pages of an antique volume, to portray the concerns of modern man, adapting a historical mode to satirize the present day.

In contrast to the avant-garde installation art that is a such a favorite with exhibition curators in Taiwan, Yang chose the characteristically oriental medium of ink and paper for the focus of her exhibition. Mrs. Chou Yang, who often discussed exhibition concepts with her daughter, explains that two years prior to "Tracing Taiwan," they learned that artifacts from the National Palace Museum were due to be loaned for display at the Metropolitan Museum. Alice Yang felt that this would present an excellent opportunity for introducing contemporary art from Taiwan, and decided on ink and brush painting because of its resonance with traditional culture. Although the four artists participating in the exhibition work in this traditional medium, their creations depart dramatically from the forms of that tradition. Reviewing the exhibition, New York Times art critic Holland Cotter wrote that Yang's selection reflected her fascination with the process of cultural merging.

In the essay that accompanied the exhibition, Yang made it clear that she did not want to present Taiwanese art in terms of the stereotyped dichotomies between China and the West, and tradition and the present. Her intention was to overcome both the timeworn approach of regarding Taiwanese painting in terms of its evolution from traditional Chinese ink and brush painting, and the custom of viewing modern art in Taiwan by analogy with the development of art in the West, and instead to try and trace the true identity of Taiwanese art by starting from the cultural and social space of contemporary Taiwan. "The ancient and the modern go hand in hand in today's Taiwan," said Yang. On television for example, traditional puppet shows are interspersed with motorcycle adverts, while out on the streets folk rituals are performed to a disco beat blaring from truck-borne synthesizers. Such is the way that different strands of the culture are interwoven in Taiwan: a fusion of traditional and popular cultures that is reflected in the exhibits that comprise "Tracing Taiwan."

Like a musical recital

Hou Chun-ming, a veteran of numerous international art exhibitions and the first artist from Taiwan to be selected for participation in the Venice Biennial, says that exhibition organizers in Taiwan generally like to do big shows with big themes, using lots of space. "The battle drums pound, and there is plenty of noise to draw attention, but the subject at hand can only be dealt with in broad terms. By comparison, Alice Yang's show is like a musical recital: sharp and tight, presenting a dissertation on a unique theme."

It has always been difficult for Asian modern art to break into the Western mainstream. While the treasures of the National Palace Museum have an established pedigree and represent the cream of 5,000 years of Chinese culture, modern art has always been a Western domain, one in which Asia is usually considered subordinate. Alice Yang believed that the way to stake out a distinct ground for Asian modern art was to first establish the necessary theoretical foundation, placing the modern arts of Asia and the West on an equal footing.

Essays and art criticism written by Yang before her death have already been published in book form by New York University Press, with a Chinese version due to go to print in Taiwan this month-further testament to Yang's efforts to further the possibilities of Asian art.

Art critic Lu Jung-chih considers "Tracing Taiwan" an exemplary exhibition, at a time when curators in Taiwan seem be getting carried away with their own importance. In addition to benefiting from a clarity of conception, the exhibition was two years in the making, during which time Yang made close to ten return visits to Taiwan and was in contact with dozens of artists, meanwhile whittling the number down until she had settled on four that were best suited to her theme. At the same time, Yang was seeking support from foundations and private enterprise in both the US and Taiwan, and arranging for a slot at the Drawing Center.

The music lingers

Two years ago, when Suhwa Chou Yang received the news in Taiwan of her daughter's accident, and before flying to the US herself, she telephoned Hou Chun-ming and asked him to inform the other artists that the exhibition would definitely go ahead as scheduled. Yang's unfinished work was then carried to completion by her mother, who invited the artists to the US, set up the venue, arranged the opening party, had the catalog printed and published the book of Yang's articles. After a successful run at the Drawing Center in New York, the exhibition transferred to the Parrish Art Museum in Long Island, then the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum in California, and finally the Taipei Fine Arts Museum back in Taiwan. Mrs. Chou Yang handled the arrangements for the tour and covered all costs herself.

"When Alice left, I left with her too. Alice was like another me, almost an extension of myself, and my lifelong joys were all realized through her," says Mrs. Chou Yang, who is brought to tears each time she speaks of her daughter. Turning through the pages in a photo album, she asks blankly: "How could such a blessed, laughter-loving girl as her die so young?"

After touring the US the exhibition wound up in Taiwan, but the story doesn't end there. When Alice Yang was growing up she became interested in art under her mother's influence, and Alice's lead later helped her mother to broaden her own artistic perspectives. Grieving over her daughter's loss, Mrs. Chou Yang decided to return and settle in Taiwan after many years in the US, and is currently arranging an unconventional display space for artists with modern ideas.

Has Alice Yang left us? Perhaps not, judging by the pictures in the album of the daughter who so resembles her mother, and by the mother herself, who speaks of art with such a passion. Contemplating Alice Yang's influence on those she left behind, one hopes that her work of "tracing" Taiwan will continue, encouraging people to look more deeply into Asian art.

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"Tracing Taiwan," the exhibition organized by the late Chinese-American art curator Alice Yang, concluded its two-year tour in the land of her birth-Taiwan. (photo by Pu Hua-chih)

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The four contemporary Taiwanese artists (from the right: Yu Peng, Hou Chun-ming, Hsu Yu-jen and Huang Chih-yang) whose innovative adaptations of traditional ink and brush technique were introduced to the US through "Tracing Taiwan." Alice Yang's untimely death was a great loss for the arts community in Taiwan. (photo by Tsai Wen-hsiang)

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It was her mother's example that led Alice to become involved in art, and Alice in turn later helped inspire her mother's interest in contemporary art. In terms of art, the lives of mother and daughter became as one. (courtesy of Suhwa Chou Yang)

It was her mother's example that led Alice to become involved in art, and Alice in turn later helped inspire her mother's interest in contemporary art. In terms of art, the lives of mother and daughter became as one. （courtesy of Suhwa Chou Yang）