Candice Xiaobing Jee is an Australian born Perth based artist who is a recipient of the Ministry of Education’s Taiwan Scholarship from September 2015 to August 2017, studying under the Masters of Chinese Arts for International Students at the National Taiwan University of Arts.
Candice has a Bachelor of Arts from Curtin University, and is a Meisterschülerin of Visual Arts from the University of Arts Berlin. She is also a recipient of the Ian Potter Cultural Trust Grant, a prestigious award to assist emerging and early career Australian artists of exceptional talent to develop overseas.
In her graduation exhibition All the flowers have foreign names, she took us to the start of her journey from the enduring cold days in Germany, lectures on French post-structuralism and found her inspiration from a Chinese garden built by a sinophilic German filmmaker in the suburbs of Berlin. A Chinese garden in Germany is her space to question the idea of cultural belonging, the rootedness to land, the regarding of oneself as the inevitable inheritor of a paternal lineage, and of cultural patriotism.
Candice interweaves her recently discovered ancestral history back to the Song Dynasty layered with her investigations into contemporary Chinese gardens in Taipei to reshape her identity as an Australian Chinese artist. All the flowers have foreign names will be held at the Haiton Art Centre in Taipei from 24 of June till 1 of July, 2017. Highlights of the exhibition and interpretation can be found at the link of Haiton Art Centre Facebook event
The Ministry of Education offers Taiwan Scholarship to outstanding Australian citizens who are 18 years old up and wish to enroll in a degree program (Bachelor, Master or PhD) in Taiwan. Recipients will receive tuition and payment of academic fees up to a maximum amount of NTD 40,000 and a monthly stipend of NTD 15,000 for a Bachelor program or NTD 20,000 for Master and PhD programs.
The reception scene of Candice’s graduation exhibition All the flowers have foreign names at the Haiton Art Centre in Taipei. Photo: Marco Chang