Underneath the sweetest Songs

2026 New York – Tainan Artistic Dialogues: Underneath the Sweetest Songs 2026紐約－臺南藝術交流與對話：最甜美的歌之下

With the wonderful assistance of Luchia Meihua Lee, Executive Director of the Taiwanese American Arts Council (TAAC) in New York City, Soulangh International Art Village began their collaboration and partnership with the TAAC in 2026. Three active contemporary artists from New York were invited to undertake a period of residency in Soulangh, including Bangladesh-born Bipasha Hayat, Andrea Coronil, who grew up in both Venezuela and the USA, and Taiwan-born Hsiao-Chu Hsia. Based on the theme of sugar, the three artists created work drawing from their unique life experiences, taking the perspectives of culture, history and literature. Their artworks explore the connections between sugar, different times, cultures and people.

Considering the dark history of labor exploitation of sugar production during the colonial era, Bipasha examines the uneven structure of politics and power which is ever-present in colonialism, and which is symbolized by chains attached to the colonized by the colonizer. Bipasha’s work is deeply inspired by the English poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and his celebrated poem To a Skylark (1820), which features the line ‘Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought’. Bipasha has utilized the blossoms of Nasturtiums, which symbolize ‘hope’, and gradually transformed the imagery of ‘chains’ into 'freedom' in her drawings.

Andrea Coronil often explores the themes of women and the body in her work. She has utilized sickles, which were commonly used on sugarcane farms as an agricultural tool. A sickle can also be used as a weapon, so it carries opposing functions and meanings, namely as a constructive implement and as a destructive object. Rubbing paints with canvas bags that were used to transport sugar from different countries around the world, Andrea has created the shapes of women which respond to the women’s labor force during colonial periods, while the sickles also symbolize the more recent phenomenon of women’s empowerment.

Hsiao-Chu Hsia’s work, Bright Sugar Hide, was inspired by a popular hand-made Taiwanese snack, sugar scallions, as well as by a sense of tranquility experienced from the dim light often seen in temples and houses, and on the streets in the evening time in Taiwan. The sculptural element of Bright Sugar Hide resembles sugar scallions, and was painted with shining gold paint, reflecting a unique characteristic of the snack. An origin of sugar scallions was during the period of Japanese colonization in Taiwan. This reveals that Taiwanese people did not submit themselves to being simply suppressed and colonized, but rather they came to appreciate the preciousness and skill which went into creating a snack which they enjoyed.